Swan Dive - Jeremiah Healy (8 page)

"Soon."

Half an hour later, Hanna called Vickie for dinner,
and the three of us sat down to family-recipe soup and bread. About
midway through Hanna said, "You were in the army, John?"

"Yes."

"Overseas?"

"For a while."

"Germany?"

"No, Vietnam."

"Oh." She didn’t say that it was too bad
that Roy hadn’t gone there and I to Germany, but she was thinking
it.

After supper, I tried to reach Murphy but got no
answer at his home number. I slept for about five hours on Hanna’s
couch. She tried to convince me to
stay in
the house this time, but I insisted on the car, calling the Peabody
police to let them know I’d still be there.

By 11:30, I was back behind the wheel of the Fiat.
Hanna had fixed me a thermos of tea with lemon, which I stood upright
on the passenger’s bucket. On the floor near the pedals was an old
tin saucepan that she wordlessly had handed me on my way out the door

Purple dress rolled in with a different guy, but he
was too short to be Marsh in disguise. Aside from that diversion,
Saturday night made Friday look like New Year’s Eve.
 

EIGHT
-♦-

I had Sunday lunch with Hanna and Vickie, Rocky
mauling a catnipped cloth mouse in the corner of the kitchen. By
then, I was fairly sure that Marsh had decided to take the hint I’d
dropped at his house, and I left Peabody around 2:00 P.M..

Driving into Boston, I circled my block a few times
to be sure old Roy hadn’t decided to shift his aim to me. I parked
behind my building and trudged up the stairs. I tried Nancy’s
number first, but apparently she wasn’t back from New York yet. I
reached Murphy’s home, his wife calling to him to leave the grill
alone for a while and come talk to me.

"Cuddy?"

"Hi, Lieutenant?

"We got company for barbecue, so I don’t have
too much time."

"Shoot."

"Your boy Marsh, Roy M., stirred some interest."

"How so?"

"Seems my friend in Narcotics has some photos of
Marsh in the company of one J. J. Braxley."

"This Braxley a cocaine dealer?"

"Call him a distributor."

"Big-time?"

"Dawk—that’s my narcotics man, Ned
Dawkins--he didn’t seem to think so. Braxley’s a Crucian."

"As in Saint Croix?"

"Right. Come up from the island in the early
seventies, set up shop. Not oversmart, but enough careful and enough
lucky to stay out of the big shit so far. Probably deals with a white
dude like your Marsh just to spread the snow line a little farther
north without a whole lot of risk."

"Thanks, Lieutenant?

"Cuddy, you remember what I said to you. And
don’t you be messing with Braxley, either. Old J .J. like to use
the muscle, and his hired help’d scare the Fridge off the football
field."

"Good to know."

"I got a round of drinks to make here. Anything
else?"

"Yeah. I’ve got to requalify at the range
tomorrow. Can you put in a good word for me?"

I think he was laughing as he hung up.

The couch felt so good I
figured I’d doze off for a while. I woke up at 9:15 P.M., hungry
but still blurry after my two nights sitting upright. I heated some
canned chili and put half of a frozen French baguette on top of the
pot lid to defrost. I washed things down with a couple of Killian’s
Irish Red ales, tried Nancy again without success, and went to sleep
in a real bed for a change.

* * *

To get to the Boston Police Revolver Range, you drive
south on the Expressway to Neponset Circle, then over the bridge to
Quincy Shore Drive. At a traffic light, you turn onto East Squantum
Street, bearing left all the way and enjoying an unusual aspect of
Dorchester Bay and the city behind it. You feel as though you’re
driving on a deserted causeway, winding toward some abandoned
lighthouse. Then, just after several large water locks, you see the
range compound, technically on a harbor chunk called Moon Island. I
parked next to the one-story bungalow with the police department’s
blue-on-white sign.

Inside, the range officer took my name and told me to
have a seat. He was about fifty-five, with curly gray hair and a
soft-spoken manner. Handing me a duplicate of the instruction sheet
you get at the licensing unit back at headquarters, he suggested I
review it while he got some ammunition.

In Massachusetts, the right to carry a concealed
firearm is governed by the police of the municipality in which you
reside. You have to have reasonable grounds for needing a permit, and
Boston’s live-fire test involves shooting thirty rounds at various
distances. All in the bull’s eye would be a perfect 300. To pass,
you need 210 points, a 70 percent score. Basically, that means
hitting a roughly chest-size target with most of your thirty bullets.
The problem is, if you shoot less than 2lO, you have to wait six
months before you can try again.

The officer came back to me with an old tomato can in
his hand. He took me out through a rear door, passing under the
large-print sign that spelled out Boston Police Rule 303 ("The
Use of Deadly Force is Permitted: . . ."). We walked toward the
numbered asphalt firing stations at the close edge of the range.

No one else was in sight. The blue target holders
were posted about twenty-five yards away against a high reddish brown
barrier and an even higher earth berm behind it.

The officer placed the can on the ground and
unholstered his revolver. After checking to be sure the cylinder was
empty, he stuck his fingers into and through the gun’s frame to
keep the cylinder swung out and safe. I slowly drew the four-inch
Combat Masterpiece I had carried.

He said, “No, sir. You’ll use my weapon. I’ll
be handing you the cartridges as appropriate. Please keep the barrel
pointed downrange at all times and deposit the spent casings in the
can."

I returned my piece to its holster and took his,
keeping my fingers through the frame as he had.

"We’l1 move downrange now to the seven-yard
line. You’ll be firing twelve rounds from there."

We came to a stop at the target distance from which
over half of the actual police gun battles are fought.

"All six shots have to be fired one-handed,
double-action. Do you understand what that means?"

"Yes."

"You can practice a few dry-fires with the
weapon if you want."

"No, thanks." He doled out six bullets to
me, and I loaded them.

"You may fire when ready."

I put my left hand in my pants pocket, assumed a
bent-L arrangement with my feet, and took a deep breath, letting it
out slowly. I inhaled again, aimed, and began to exhale, pulling the
trigger without cocking the hammer. I repeated the procedure,
including the deliberate breathing, five more times.

"Make it safe."

I swung the cylinder out, and we walked to the
target.

He said, "Four tens, a nine, and an eight."

Back at the seven-yard line, I fired another string
of six. Five tens and a nine.

As we moved to the fifteen-yard line, he said, "You
have any prior experience?"

"With guns?"

"Uh-huh."

“
Military Police. Mostly forty-fives."

He nodded.

"Weapon as finely balanced and maintained as
yours would make anybody look better."

Another nod.

I fired my next three strings single-action,
two-handed, with my feet spread wide and my shoulders and trunk
hunched down in what’s usually called the combat stance. My point
total came to 289. We returned to the bungalow, and the officer
certified my score in a logbook.

He handed me the necessary paperwork and shook my
hand. "Hope we’ll be seeing you again in five years, Mr.
Cuddy."

I said thank you and
decided it was the first time he’d actually smiled since I’d met
him.

* * *

After the second ring, I heard, "Nancy Meagher."

"As a watchful taxpayer, I’d like to know why
you’re not guarding the common weal in court."

"Oh, hi, John. As a matter of fact, I should be,
but after I broke my neck to catch the dawn shuttle back from La
Guardia, the judge I’m trying before was in a fender bender this
morning and still hasn’t arrived."

"Wil1 this screw up dinner tonight‘?"

"No way. Just drop by a little after six-thirty
and see the guard in the first-floor lobby. I’ll come down as soon
as he tells me you’re here."

"See you then."

“
Oh, John?"

"Yes?"

“
Thanks for calling."

“
Don’t thank me. It’s good to hear your voice."

“
Bye, John."

I hung up the receiver and
looked at my watch. Plenty of time for a quick lunch and a visit
before going in to the office.

* * *

I’m glad about Nancy, John.

"Me, too. I think."

There’s always going to be some uncertainty, you
know.

"I know." I laid the baby tulips, mixed
yellow and white, longways to her, just outside the shadow the marker
threw.

You’ve seen enough of people who won ’t move
forward with their lives.

I thought of what Roy was doing to Hanna and Vickie
and said, "I’m working on a miserable case, kid. Divorce."

I thought you didn’t do them.

"So did I. But it’s a favor for Chris
Christides."

Chris. Chris and Eleni.

"Right. She’s no better, though. In fact,
she’s much worse. In a wheelchair now and so old, old and worn."
I squatted down beside the flowers. The topmost bud had opened a
little, and the wind off the harbor bent the petals, like a moistened
finger on the page of a book. "Remember how Chris used to
revolve around her, spend all his time describing what new American
thing she’d seen or learned?"

My mother used to say that.

"What?"

That you know you love people when you think of
past times in terms of events in their lives rather than your own.

"I’m not sure Eleni and Chris qualify
anymore."

Oh, I ’m sorry.

"Yeah, me too."

I looked down the slope to the water. Two people with
nothing better to do on a Monday than sail seemed to be racing each
other as a low-slung, enormous freighter of some kind, black except
for the rust patches, sloughed past them. The sailboats, probably
twenty-five feet each, looked like tiny moths fluttering around a
shambling old dog.

John, do you think Eleni is close?

She didn’t have to say close to what. "I don’t
know much about MS. Just that it takes a long time to take you."

A minute passed, then:
If
there’s a time you think it would help, tell Eleni that afterwards
isn’t so bad.

* * *

I backed and hauled, a half-turn of the wheel at a
time, into the pitiful parking space in the alley behind my office
building on Tremont Street. I could barely open the driver’s door
because of the Dempster Dumpster and the fringe of near-miss trash
around it. In downtown Boston, however, a manageable slot for a car
is nothing to get mad at. Plus, with the Fiat there, I could drive to
the condo to shower and change before picking Nancy up for dinner.

I used the stairs to my office, which smelled musty
when I unlocked the door and scooped up the mail. I left the door
open and pulled up one of my windows, enjoying the bustle of the
Common and letting the refreshing air cross-ventilate the room. I’d
let slide two reports on insurance scams, so I wrote them out
longhand; the claims departments involved would have them typed and
returned to me for signature. After the reports, I read a letter
request from a concerned mother in Kentucky. She believed that her
Marbrey, aged fifteen, had run off to Boston and would get in more
trouble than a rooster at a fox farm. Finding my name in a telephone
directory at the library in Lexington, she trusted me because she
once knew an honest storekeeper over to Clay City named Cuddy who
came from back east somewheres. Enclosed was a weathered family
photograph (with a penciled arrow pointing to a boy who couldn’t
have been older than ten) and a postal money order for $100. She
didn’t include a telephone number. I wrote her back a polite
letter, returning the photo and the money order and suggesting that
she contact me if she could assemble the laundry list of information
I requested.

I called Hanna, who said that she’d seen no sign of
Roy and that Vickie really loved her new kitty. I told I her I
thought the worst was over and that the divorce would probably go as
smoothly as those things could. I hung up, tried Chris’s number,
and got him on the third ring.