Authors: Jeremiah Healy
“Thanks, but I've seen enough.”
He shook his head. “You're wrong there, pal. Someday you're gonna think back and say to yourself, âI saw Nasharbor and Harborside back when.' I'm telling you, this city is perched on the edge of greatness.”
I didn't have to ask where I'd heard that before.
I
LEFT THE CAR
in a visitor's spot and walked through the front door of the
Beacon.
The receptionist did not exactly light up.
“I'd like to see Liz Rendall or Malcolm Peete, please.”
She told me to have a seat without asking for my name. From the chair, I could see her hissing into her mouthpiece.
It took Arbuckle exactly thirty-four seconds to appear in the archway to the corridor.
“Cuddy, my office.”
I followed him back. Glancing around the crowded city room, I couldn't see Peete or Rendall.
Once in his office, Arbuckle motioned toward the chair I'd used the last time. He closed the door behind him hard enough to rattle the glass in the interior window as he marched to his side of the desk.
I said, “Good to show the ranks you're in command.”
“What?”
“Slamming the door like that. Good device. Got to be careful not to overuse it, though.”
“I thought I told you not to come here after Tuesday.”
“You did.”
“Then what the hell are you doing here now?”
“You told me to talk with Peete or Rendall. That's who I asked for out front.”
“I told you to talk to them on Tuesday. Today's Thursday. Am I going to have to call the cops?”
“I wouldn't. Under the trespass statute, you have to ask me to leave again first. The receptionist heard you tell me to come back with you. Since you're someone in authority on the premises, it seems to me that I'm okay legally.”
Arbuckle did a slow burn. He did it well, but I decided not to compliment him.
He said, “Why can't you leave well enough alone?”
“It doesn't look so well to me.”
“Can't you seeâ”
“Aren't you going to ask me about my leg?”
“Your leg?”
“Yeah, I'm limping. Didn't you notice?”
“I don't give a rat's ass about your leg.”
“You might be missing a story. Somebody tried to run me down this morning.”
“Sounds like a good idea to me.”
“It'd be a lot easier if you'd just let me hang around here, ask some questions and look at some files.”
“Get out.” He banged a button on his phone panel. “Jeannette, if you don't see this guy Cuddy go by you and out within sixty seconds, call the police.”
The receptionist's voice came over the speaker box. “And tell them what?”
“Tell them to come get Mr. Cuddy the fuck out of here!”
“Okay, okay.”
Arbuckle banged the button again and glared at me. I said, “I hope my knee'll hold up under the strain.”
Going through the building's front door, I saw Liz Rendall race up in a little American car with NASHARBOR
BEACON
on the driver's side door and a CB radio antenna stuck on the roof. She got out and said, “What's wrong with your leg?”
“Hurt it this morning, jogging. Can I speak with you for a minute?”
“Yes, but I'm running late. Wait in your car. I'll be right out.” I went to the Prelude and waited. Two minutes later, she hurried through the door of the
Beacon
and into a different car, an Alfa Romeo convertible. Expensive transportation for a reporter. She started up and drove by, beckoning for me to follow.
Including Rendall, the aerobics class had seven members, all female. The instructor was a muscular woman with short black hair moussed into a spiky brush cut. The tempo was fast, and Liz was the only one in the loft who really could keep up with Spike. The ceiling vibrated with Aerosmith and Whitney Houston while the floor quaked from the cadence of the routines.
Liz wore a yellow leotard outfit with the false socks, in navy blue, that I think are called leg warmers. Slim and sinewy, she moved well, and she knew it. The instructor treated the music as an opponent to conquer. Rendall welcomed the music as a partner to the dance, allowing its excesses to show off her capacity to be both energetic and sensual. I wondered if any of it was for my benefit. I caught myself hoping just a little that it was, which surprised me. Liz looked uncannily like Beth, but she wasn't
like
Beth at all. Liz was more like Nancy, though maybe a little more aggressive.
The tape stopped after forty-five minutes. Rendall grabbed a towel and came over to me. The perspiration scent rolled in front of her, that sweet musk some women exude after hard physical work.
Smiling, she shook her head, the ringlets of hair curling and recurling damply as she rubbed the towel from ear to ear. “You ever try aerobics?”
“No.”
“Too sissy for you?”
“Maybe it reminds me too much of another time.”
“What other time?”
“When we all wore green and the leader had stripes.”
“Then I can't blame you.” She passed the towel down her chest, the nipples underneath the stretch material doing their level best to pop out. “What'd you think?”
“I thought you looked great.”
Rendall shook her head again, this time negatively. “I don't make myself look good to come here. I make myself come here to look good.”
“That's how I meant it.”
“Then I'm glad I dragged you along.” She grasped my wrist, turning it so she could read my watch. There was a perfectly functioning clock on the wall, but she held tight, as though she were just learning to tell time. “I'm going to have to get out of here. You have a run-in with Arbuckle?”
“Sort of.”
“After I came back from lunch with you on Tuesday, he told me he never wanted to see you again. I tried to call you, but all I got was ⦠“ Liz scrunched her features and dropped her voice two octaves. “âYou know, I run a motel here, lady, not some goddam message center.'”
I laughed. “You do a good Emil Jones. How's your Gary Cooper?”
“I'd rather you see my Julia Child. I've got copies of Jane's new articles and my notes on the old ones at home. We can talk over dinner tonight.”
“I don't think so.”
Her bubbly air subsided. “Look, I don't ” I have the funeral tomorrow, Jane's, I mean, and I'm kind of down. This,” she waved her hand around the loft, “has already started to wear off. I'd really appreciate some company tonight. Even just for dinner. What do you say?”
I thought about how much lousier funerals were when you anticipated them. “Okay.”
“Great. Anything you can't eat?”
“Shrimp.”
“No problem. You have a good sense of the city yet?”
“Getting there.”
“You take Main Street to Armory, then a right onto Armory to The Quay. Follow The Quay all the way to the end. My place is the last one on the right. Seven-thirty, bring white wine.” She headed for a makeshift locker room off in a corner.
“Hey, you have a house number?”
“Last place on the right. You can't miss it.”
I watched Rendall bounce lightly on the balls of her feet as she moved away. After the folks I planned to see next, a home-cooked meal sounded better and better.
I bought a crabmeat plate and lemonade at a luncheonette, then crisscrossed the east side of town till I found Grantland Avenue. Knocking on doors, I finally got someone to point out Gail Fearey's place. The homes on Grantland made the shacks on Crestview look like the mansions at Newport. What cars there were reminded me of the primered Buick, stilted on cinder blocks or slumped in carports like old dogs.
Fearey's house was a tiny ranch on a narrow lot. The driveway was packed dirt with a few patches of gravel too deeply embedded to erode away. A broken, rusted tricycle was at the edge of the driveway, as though somebody had run over it in the winter and just left it there to degrade over time.
The siding was dull yellow here and flat white there. A picture window had nine frames where there should have been glass. Cardboard, irregularly cut and of different colors, was stapled over four of them. I walked to the front metal door that had neither screen nor storm window. The stock wooden door behind it affected a mail slot. I reached through the metal door and knocked on the wooden one.
On my third try a female voice, husky from too much smoking, spoke from the other side of the door. “Who is it?”
“Gail Fearey?”
“Who is it?”
“Ms. Fearey, my name is John Cuddy. I'm investigating the death of Jane Rust, and I'd like to talk with you.”
“I don't wanna talk about her.”
“Just a second.” I took a twenty from my wallet, tearing it in half. “I'm going to slip half of a twenty dollar bill through the mail slot, Ms. Fearey. You get the other half if you let me come in. You piece the two halves together, the stores will accept it.”
No reply.
I flipped the slot and shot the first half in to her.
After a moment, she said, “You got any ID?”
“Yes. Here it comes.”
After another moment, the locks clicked and the door itself came open. I pulled the metal door out and stepped inside.
“Here's your ID.” She was about five-two and looked anorectic, the big blue eyes popping from a waif's teardrop face like a Margaret Keane painting. Acne scars riddled each cheek, and she used no makeup that I could see. Her lips were bloodless, her clothes a tee shirt that hung off her and jeans that billowed where they should have filled. “Where's my other half?”
“Of the twenty?”
“Right.”
“You get that after we talk.”
A world-weary expression came over her features. “Sure.”
Fearey turned away, walking to a gut-sprung chair. The chair and the daybed sofa across from it had metallic gray electrician's tape in a lot of places. A bulky color TV nearly caved in the milk crates beneath it. The video was on, but no sound came out. A thick elastic band stretched tautly from the ears of the channel changer to a brick on the floor. Sitting, she saw me staring at the set.
“Tuner's gone. Rubber band's the only thing can hold it on a channel.”
I chose the daybed sofa. “Is the sound gone, too?”
“No. The brat's asleep in the other room. He's been acting up lately, so keep your voice down, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Got a cigarette?”
“Sorry.”
“Think I got some somewhere. Just a second.”
Fearey shuffled to the kitchen counter, pushing a Burger King bag onto the floor before finding a crushed pack of something. She pawed through three drawers for matches.
Coming back and lighting up, she said, “I'm trying to quit. For the kid. Bad for his lungs too, they say now.”
I nodded. “I understand you lived here with Charlie Coyne.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. He lived here with me.”
“The difference being?”
“This house was my parents'. They died, and I got it. Charlie, he never owned anything in his life.”
“How'd you meet him?”
“Charlie?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you wanted to know about Rust, the reporter.”
“I do. I think her death and Charlie's are connected.”
Fearey almost laughed. “They were connected alright.”
“I heard that too, but I don't understand it.”
She looked around. “You mean you don't understand how he could leave me and all this every coupla nights to hump Miss College Tight-Ass?”
After thinking about my phrasing, I said, “I guess I mean I don't see how they would have become interested in each other.”
“Thanks for sparing my feelings like that.”
I didn't say anything.
“Look, Charlie, he wasn't much, you know? But there was something about him. He just had a look in his eyes, like to say, âI really know how to make a woman happy.' I don't know how else to describe it, because it never made sense to me, either, and I was nuts about the guy.”
“Jane Rust told me that Charlie was her confidential source for a story on pornography. Kiddie porn.”
“Charlie did all kinds of things. I never got involved.”
“I'm not saying you did. I just need to know what was going on.
“Can't help you.”
“Charlie a delivery boy for the stuff?”
The lips dissolved into two traced lines. “Like I said, I can't help you.”
“Know anybody who can?”
“No.”
“The night Charlie was killed. Tell me about it.”
The lips relaxed, and she looked past me, out the window. “We had dinner here, some Kentucky Fried he bought on the way home. Tiger's favorite.”
“Tiger?”
“The kid. Charlie's and mine. He's two. Charlie called him Tiger, help make him tough, you know?”
I was thinking that half the people in the city were named after animals, but I said, “Go on.”
“Well, we had the chicken, and Tiger got the runs, he gets them sometimes from the fast-food stuff, don't know why, and Charlie, he'd had a few beers and wasn't about to sit around all night, smell the brat's shit every ten minutes.”
“When did he leave here?”
“I don't know. Around âWheel of Fortune.'”
“The game show?”
“Yeah.”
“So maybe seven, seven-thirty?”
“Around there.”
“Do you know where he was going?”
“The Strip.”
“He said that?”
“No, but that's where he always went.”
“Any particular place?”
“Yeah. Anywhere they shook tits and ass. Charlie was a consistent son of a bitch.”
“Bun's?”
“One of his favorites.”
“Because he got comped to drinks?”