The Front (6 page)

He continues to wait. The house is dark, and not a sound comes from it. An hour passes. Just when he's about to do something, he hears the back door shut, then footsteps. He ducks behind a tall hedge, watches a dark shape turn into Lamont as she walks alone to her car, carrying something. She opens the passenger door and the interior light goes on. What appears to be sloppily folded linens. She tosses them on the seat. He watches her drive off, no sign of whoever she had been with inside the house. Bizarre thoughts race through his mind. She's involved in something illegal. Drugs. Organized crime. Her recent shopping sprees—maybe she's on the take. His new assignment—maybe there's more to it than another one of her political charades. Maybe there's a reason she doesn't want him in her office, want him around.

He remains in his hiding place a little longer, then starts exploring the perimeter of the house, his tactical light brightly cutting across damage to the siding where downspouts appear to have been forcefully removed, and along the roofline, more damage, the gutters gone. Copper flashing with a green patina, suggesting the missing downspouts and gutters might have been old oxidizing copper. Through a window by the back door, he can see the burglar-alarm panel. Green light, not armed. He uses the tactical light to tap out a pane of glass, reaches his hand inside, careful not to cut himself, and unlocks the door. He studies the alarm panel. Obsolete, inactive, green light indicates only that power's on. The house smells musty, the kitchen in shambles, appliances ripped out, tarnished copper plumbing parts scattered over the floor.

He walks in the direction of the room he's fairly certain Lamont was in earlier, the beam of light cutting across the dusty hardwood flooring. Footwear impressions everywhere, some of them quite visible, perhaps from people walking through wet grass before entering the house. He crouches, takes a closer look at impressions that have no tread pattern, the familiar teardrop shape left by high-heel shoes. Lamont. Then others. Larger, round-toe, mesh tread pattern, and unmistakable stripe-shaped impression on the heel. Prada or a Prada knockoff. For a confused instant, he wonders if he left them. Not possible. For one thing, he's still wearing his motorcycle boots. He realizes, uncannily, that he forgot his Prada shoes, left them in his gym bag, which now, according to Nana, has been stolen.

There are other shoewear impressions, similar in size but different treads, maybe running shoes, hiking boots, maybe left by multiple people. Or maybe the same two people have been in here multiple times, obviously not always wearing the same shoes. He uses the tactical light for side lighting, takes photographs with his iPhone from three different angles, using a nine-millimeter cartridge from his pistol for a scale. He estimates the size of the Prada or Prada-like shoes is a ten, maybe ten and a half, about his size. He looks around some more, shining the light across ornate light fixtures, crown molding, cornices, and castings, probably original to the house. He finds the room he's looking for, what appears to have been a parlor in the long-ago past.

Footprints everywhere, some of them appearing to be the same as the ones in other areas of the house, and in the middle of the floor is a bare mattress. Nearby is a thick candle, the wax around the wick melted and warm, and an unopened bottle of red wine, a 2002 Wolf Hill pinot noir, same pinot, even the same vintage that Stump gave him earlier today when he talked to her at Pittinelli's. The same pinot, same vintage, of the bottle he accidentally left in his gym bag along with his Prada shoes.

He takes more photographs, returns to the kitchen, and notices something on a countertop that strikes him as peculiar: The torn cardboard and plastic packaging from a disposable camera—a Solo H
²
O with a flash. Maybe some insurance investigator taking pictures of the damage to the house. But rather unprofessional to use a disposable camera. He opens cupboards, rummages, finds an old stew pot, two foil pans. Careful how he touches them, he places the bottle of wine in the pot, the candle in one foil pan, and the disposable camera package in the other. One last sweep with his light, and he notices a window that isn't latched, notices disturbed dust on both sides of the glass. More photographs using side lighting, but he doesn't see any ridge detail, just smudges. A lot of peeling paint has been knocked off the sill and the outside of the sash. Could have been done by someone opening the window from the outside and maybe climbing through it.

Stump sounds distracted when she answers her phone. When she realizes it's him, she seems taken aback.

“I thought I made it clear you're on your own,” she says au thoritatively, as if she might arrest him.

“The 2002 Wolf Hill pinot,” he says.

“You're calling me at this hour to tell me what you think of the wine?”

“You said you just got it in. Has anybody bought it? And do any other stores carry it around here?”

“Why?”

Her tone is different, as if she's not alone. An alarm is going off inside him. Be careful what you say.

“Price shopping.” He thinks fast. “Uncorked it when I got home. Amazing. Thought I'd get a case of it.”

“You're really nervy, you know that?”

“So I was kicking back, started thinking. Maybe you should try it with me,” he says. “At my place. I cook a mean veal chop.”

“I don't believe in eating baby calves,” she says. “And I've got no interest in having dinner with you.”

Nana's Buick shakes and coughs as the engine turns off, and the driver's door screeches open like a prehistoric bird.

Win pockets the key, wonders why Farouk the landlord is sitting on the back steps, lighting a cigarette. Since when does he smoke, and he's breaking his own rule. No smoking, no lighting matches or grills, not so much as a spark is allowed on the grounds of his nineteenth-century brick apartment building, a former school, impeccably maintained and rented to privileged people. Or in Win's case, to someone who earns his keep. It's past midnight.

“Either you just started a nasty new habit or something's up,” says Win.

“An ugly shorty was looking for you,” Farouk says, a dish towel under him, probably so he doesn't get dirt on his ill-fitting white suit.

“She calls herself my shorty?” Win says. “Or is that what you're calling her?”

“She say it, not me. I don't know what it is.”

“Gang slang for girlfriend,” Win says.

“See! I knew she was a gangster! I knew it! That's why I'm this upset! I don't want peoples like that, try very hard to keep things the right way.” In his heavy accent. “These peoples you see in your job, they come here, I have to ask you to move out! My tenants will complain and I will lose my leases!”

“Easy going, Farouk . . .”

“No! I let you here for this unbelievable good price to protect me from bad peoples, and then they come here, these very ones you're supposed to keep away!” He jabs his finger at Win. “Good thing no one but me sees her! I'm very upset. Peoples like that show up here, and you let me down. You have to move.”

“What did she look like, and tell me exactly what happened.” Win sits next to him.

“I come home from dinner and this white girl come from nowhere like a ghost . . .”

“Where? Here in back? Were you sitting out here smoking when she showed up?”

“I got very upset and so I go to visit José across the street to have a beer and see if he know anything about the shorty, ever seen her, and he said no. So he give me a cigarette or two. I only smoke when I get very stressed, you know. I don't want you to have to move, you know.”

Win tries again. “What time was it when she showed up, and where were you? Inside your apartment?”

“I just was dropped off from dinner, so I'm thinking maybe nine o'clock, and you know I always come in from back here, and as I walk up these steps, there she is like a ghost out of a movie. Like she was waiting. I never seen her before and have no idea. She say to me, ‘Where's the policeman?' I say, ‘What policeman?' Then she says, ‘Geronimo.' ”

“She said that?” Few people know his nickname. Mostly cops.

“I swear,” Farouk says.

“Describe her.”

“It's hard to see, you know. I should get lights. A cap on, big pants and short. Skinny.”

“What makes you think she's involved in gang activity? Aside from my telling you what a shorty is.”

“The way she talk. Like a black person even though she white. And very rough talk, street talk, said a lot of bad words.” He repeats a few of them. “And when I say I don't know a policeman named Geronimo, because I protect you always, she cuss me some more and say she knows you live here, and she hand me this.” He slides an envelope out of his jacket pocket.

“How many times I got to tell you not to touch things if they're suspicious?” Win says. “That's why I had to take your fingerprints a couple years ago. Remember? Because you touched something else some wacko left me?”

“I'm not one of these
sissies
on TV.”

Farouk is hopeless with acronyms, thinks CSI is pronounced “sissy.” Thinks DNA is
D&A,
refers to drugs and alcohol testing.

“You can get prints, other evidence off paper,” Win reminds him, knowing it won't do any good. Farouk never remembers, doesn't care.

Certainly this isn't the first time someone has delivered unsolicited communications to the building or has simply shown up uninvited. The downside to Win's living here so long is it's impossible to keep his address a secret. But typically, his unexpected visitors are nonthreatening. A woman he's met somewhere. Now and then, someone who's read about a case, saw something, knows something, and asks around until he or she gets Win's address. More often, some paranoid soul who wants police protection. Sure, people leave him notes, even alleged evidence, but Win's never seen Farouk this upset.

Win takes the envelope, using his fingertips to hold it by two corners, returns to Nana's car, manages to collect his evidence, carry it without dropping anything. Farouk smokes and watches.

“You see her again, you call me right away,” Win says to him. “Some nutcase comes looking for me, don't bum cigarettes and sit out here in the dark for hours, waiting for me to show up.”

“I don't want those gang peoples. Don't need drugs and shootings around here,” Farouk exclaims.

The building is a walk-up, no such thing as elevators back in the Victorian days of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Win carries the pot and pans up three flights of stairs to his apartment—two former classrooms that were connected during the renovation. Added were a kitchen, a bathroom, a window-unit air conditioner. Since he lived here during the construction, helped supervise and keep an eye on the place, he got his way about a number of things, such as preserving the original fir floors, wainscotting, vaulted ceilings, even the chalkboards, which he uses for grocery lists, other reminders of errands he needs to run, and phone numbers and appointments. He sets the evidence on a table, shuts the heavy oak door, locks it, dead bolts it, looks around the way he always does to make sure nothing is amiss, and his mood sinks lower.

After a day of Lamont and Stump, he feels worse about himself than usual, is depressingly aware of the Oriental rug, the Thomas Moser table, the leather sofa and mismatched chairs, and shelves of remaindered books he got for almost nothing and has such a hard time reading. Everything undesirable or secondhand, from junk shops, yard sales, eBay, Craigslist. Flawed, damaged, unwanted. He slides out his pistol, places it on the dining-room table, takes off his jacket and tie, unbuttons his shirt, sits at his computer, and logs on to a people-search database, enters the address for the Victorian house in Cambridge. He prints out the last thirty-five years of owners and their possible relatives. Other searches reveal the most recent real-estate transaction was this past March when the run-down property was purchased for six-point-nine million dollars by a limited liability company called FOIL. In uppercase. Must be an acronym. He Googles it.

Nothing much. Just a few hits: a San Diego rock band, an educational site called First Outside Inside Last, Freedom of Information Law, Forum of Indian Leftists, a board game that has to do with words and wit.

He can't imagine how any one of them might be connected to a Victorian mansion on Brattle Street, and it crosses his mind to call Lamont and demand an explanation, tell her he knows where she was earlier tonight, that he saw her. Maybe scare her into confessing to whatever she was doing there. He envisions the room with the mattress, the candle, evidence that photographs were taken. He thinks about the vandalism, signs of what appear to be copper theft. And he obsesses over the bottle of wine, the Prada shoe impressions. If someone is setting him up, who and why? And how is it possible Lamont's not involved?