Yesterday's News (21 page)

“Which makes the knife in the leg the one Coyne carried.”

“Right.”

I said, “That assumes the killer brought a knife to use on Coyne. The witness says the guy searched Coyne before fighting with him. Suppose the killer was looking for Coyne's own knife, stabbed him with it, then just stuck the knife through a pad or something strapped to the leg, to make it look like Coyne had gotten him so as to cover the limp the killer had coming into the fight.”

Hagan chewed the inside of his cheek, then shook his head. “You're going on an assumption, too. You're assuming the killer's also the one who did your client, right?”

“It would make sense.”

“But it doesn't.”

“How come?”

“Basic principle of homicide. Rust died by overdose, Coyne by violence, specifically a knife. Different methods entirely. A professional finds a way to kill, he stays with it because it works and he doesn't get caught doing it. A nut, he finds a way he likes, he stays with that because he's got to, the voice of his dead mother or whatever tells him to keep using it. The same person wouldn't do Coyne one way, then Rust another. Variety isn't his spice of life.”

“How about an amateur?”

Hagan said, “Amateur?”

“Yeah. You said a pro and a nutcase would both stay consistent. How about an amateur?”

“You figure Rust asked a bum in for hot cocoa Monday night?”

“I figure maybe the big guy who did Coyne wasn't a bum, remember? Also, if he knew killers stay consistent, what better way to disguise the crimes being related?”

Hagan came forward in his chair. “I don't see it that way, Cuddy.”

“Which way do you see it?”

“The way it happened. Shitbird gets knifed, depressed girl feels responsible and decides to chugalug her life.”

“I want to talk to the mother of Dwight Meller.”

Hagan's face drained like somebody pulled a plug in his throat. “Why?”

“If you're being straight with me, it seems you'd tell me where I can find her. She's not listed in the book, seems like she never has been.”

His Adam's apple rode up and down. “You ever kill anybody, Cuddy?”

“Yes.”

“Intentionally?”

“Yes.”

“How many?”

“All of them.”

“Well, I haven't. Not ever, not once. The knee kept me out of the draft. I used to think it was a miracle the force would have me. Then came that night. Aside from the Meller boy, I never took a life. And Meller was unintentional. I killed him alright, but I never meant to.”

I said, very quietly, “I'd still like to talk to his mother. You want me to waste a day checking welfare, water bills…”

Hagan blinked, then blinked again, but I think more at what was inside his head than at me. “Costigan Street, over on the north side. Number 57.”

“All these years, and you still remember the address.”

“Ought to. After that night, I drove by it every day for a month, trying to get up the courage to tell his mother I was sorry. Now get out.”

I was reaching for the knob when the door opened and a youngish plainclothes cop stuck his head in. “Sorry, Captain, but you said you wanted to know when we got an ID on the swimmer in the alley.”

“Go ahead. Mr. Cuddy was just leaving.”

As the cop passed me, he said to Hagan, “Manos made him. Only had a nickname. ‘Vip.'”

I closed my eyes and turned back around as Hagan said, “Vip?”

I said, “It stood for ‘Very Important Person.' Your star witness.”

Hagan clenched his teeth. “Coincidence, Cuddy.”

I shouted, “Oh, for crissake!”

Hagan rose from his seat and pounded a fist on his desk. The paperwork and the young cop jumped about the same height. “The guy was a bum! They found him with an empty quart of rye still in his hand, facedown in the rain puddle. They get so soused, they can't even tell they're drowning.”

“I was with the guy last night, Captain, remember? It was ten-thirty, maybe eleven. He didn't have a bottle on him, and your liquor stores would all be closed by then.”

Hagan really erupted. “You gave him some money, didn't you?”

I didn't reply.

“You gave him money so he'd talk to you, and he took it to some blind pig. You think a bum doesn't know where to buy a bottle after-hours?”

I didn't want to hear the rest of it, but I'd pushed Meller down Hagan's throat, and he had a right to do the same to me.

“They sell him the rye, Cuddy, and he downs it, then goes belly-whopping in three inches of water. What the fuck did you think he was gonna do with your money, Saint John? Buy himself some new threads, maybe a dry bed for the night? You fuckin sanctimonious asshole, you said you never killed anybody without meaning to? Well, stand proud, brother. You just got credited with your first.”

I'd heard enough and left, the young cop's mouth set for catching flies.

If I had my bearings right, the button I was pushing belonged to 57 Costigan Street, but I couldn't hear any chimes responding inside. I tried knocking; no one answered. Then I heard a vaguely familiar sound that I couldn't immediately place. A whispery, intermittent ticking noise, like someone repeatedly thumbing along and through fifty pages of a book. It was coming from behind the house.

Moving to the side yard, I noticed how similar the house was to Gail Fearey's, the major difference being the condition of each. The exterior paint here was pale peach and appeared, if not fresh, at least not completely abandoned. Mrs. Meller maintained ivy and other vines along the sunny wall, with flowers planted in a pleasing pattern beneath them.

As I turned the back corner, I could see an older, slight woman pushing a prehistoric hand mower, the thresher blades making that ticking sound. The yard was only about forty by fifty, which made the manual method seem quite rational. Her back to me, she advanced, retreated, and drove on, two or three feet at a time, waltzing to a silent tune.

I said, “Mrs. Meller?”

She quartered her progress, but only to cover a patch extending into a bed of violets. I crossed the yard, repeating her name. I was only a few steps from her when she spun around, a frightened look in her eyes.

I quickly said, “I'm sorry, I didn't mean—”

She held up her right hand in a stop sign, which had the desired effect on me. She cupped the hand to her ear, then two fingers to her lips in a shush gesture. Then she shook her head.

Deaf, and mute. Approaching sixty, her face tapered to a delicate chin and was framed by graying hair in what used to be called a pixie cut.

Mouthing the words in an exaggerated way, I said, “Do you read lips?”

She held up her hand again, this time thumb and index finger an inch apart.

“A little?”

Mrs. Meller nodded.

I produced my identification. She read it, looked up at me.

“Jane Rust hired me before she died.”

Mrs. Meller seemed baffled.

“You didn't know her?”

Negative shake.

“I think her death might have something to do with the death of your son, Dwight.”

She crossed her arms and dropped her gaze. Gulping once hard, the woman made up her mind. She moved toward the back door, indicating I should follow.

The inside of the house was as perfectly arranged and kept as the landscaping. We sat on a couch in her living room, she pointing first to a red bulb in a fixture mounted on the opposite wall. Pressing her thumb on an imaginary button in the air in front of her, she pointed next to a lamp, then opened and closed her fist like someone signaling “five” over and over.

“When the doorbell is pushed, the red light flashes?”

She nodded, smiling. Then her expression shifted. From the drawer in the end table she produced a large manila tablet like elementary school kids used when learning the alphabet. Mrs. Meller wrote quickly in capital letters, her syntax jumbled.

“WHAT YOU WANT KNOW ME”

Indicating the pad and then myself, I said, “Should I write my questions down for you?”

She shook her head, gesturing toward me and my mouth, then her and the pad. I got it.

As she stared intently at my lips, I said, “I know how the police said the incident happened. Do you believe them?”

“DWIGHT AND ME POOR BUT HIM THIEF NO”

“What do you think happened?”

“POLICE LIE ME NO KNOW WHY”

“Had Dwight ever been in trouble with the authorities before?”

As I spoke the word
authorities
her eyes fluttered, confused.

I said, “Trouble with the police before that night?”

Shaking again, she wrote,
“KIDS SCHOOL MAKE FUN ME DWIGHT MANY FIGHT”

“Aside from fights at school, though, any … any crimes?”

Dogmatically no.

“What would he have been doing in that alley?”

She seemed to bite back a memory. Then,
“DWIGHT DEAF BUT TALK SOME THEN KIDS MAKE FUN GIRLS MAKE FUN”

Mrs. Meller looked up at me, but I didn't understand, and she could see it before I could say it.

“DWIGHT GO THE STRIP FOR GIRLS”

I paused, embarrassed for her and myself and for a boy I'd never met. His visits to The Strip weren't varsity larks.

“The newspapers had only a couple of stories about what happened. Did you ever have anyone look into it, like a lawyer, maybe?”

“NO MONEY JUST ME”

“You looked into it?”

She seemed hurt, and I realized how my doubt must have appeared to her.

She wrote,
“BOOK YOU WAIT”
and left the room. I folded my hands and tried to think of a way to apologize but couldn't.

Mrs. Meller returned with a scrapbook. Resuming her seat, she opened it on her lap.

The first few plastic sleeves held old photos, black-and-white and too small or too large for today's 35-millimeter standard. She reviewed them quickly, lingering on only two shots: a much younger she and a baby, followed by a noticeably younger she and a gawky fifteen-year-old boy. She glanced at me from the corner of an eye and proceeded until the photos were succeeded by newspaper clippings.

Mrs. Meller yielded the page turning to me. She had them all. The
Globe
and the
Herald
(still the
Herald Traveler
in those days) carried only the short pieces Liz Rendall had predicted. A candid photo of the young Hagan was attached to the
Herald
story, a police academy portrait of Hagan in a parade cap in the
Globe.
I skimmed the articles from the
Beacon,
which paralleled the content and style of what Liz had told me, down to the “C. E. Griffin” bylines.

Mrs. Meller had a
Beacon
picture Liz hadn't mentioned: Hagan and Schonstein, the latter barely recognizable through the Crusader's cross of bandages taped over his face. They were entering some sort of public building. The clipping was yellowed and the photo itself expectedly grainy.

There were eight more clippings in the book. One dealt with the clearing of the officers for their actions that night, and a second was Dwight Meller's awkwardly brief obituary. The final six chronicled Hagan's sequential promotions, with an Op-Ed piece broadly suggesting that he was the right man to next occupy the chair of chief.

I checked to make sure there were no more entries. I realized Mrs. Meller was watching me expectantly.

My demeanor must have conveyed the unspoken question “Is this it?,” because she closed the book very carefully and formed her hands around the edges, straightening the leaves in a way I couldn't appreciate or caressing the memories in a way I could.

I started to say, “Mrs. Meller …,” but realized she wasn't looking at me. I touched her sleeve, and she tore herself from the past.

“Mrs. Meller, thank you for showing me this. I lost my wife before her time, and I know that going through all this again wasn't easy for you.”

She reached for the tablet.
“POLICE KILL DWIGHT YOU FIND OUT WHY TELL ME”

I said I'd try.

Wonder of wonders, Richard Dykestra was in his office. Even the receptionist seemed surprised.

Dykestra came through an inner door when he heard my voice. He said “Hold my calls” to her and “C'mon” to me.

A scale model of Harborside haunted a table near his desk. Pink telephone message slips were clustered next to a multilined Rolm receiver. I sat on a black leather hammock stitched to a chrome frame. Dykestra plopped into a big swivel chair, his feet resting pigeon-toed on the base of the chair.

“Thought me and you had our talk already.”

“Some things came up. I remembered you saying Jane Rust never bought your explanations. Figured I'd give you the chance to sell them to me.”

“Let's hear your questions.”

“I read Jane's articles on redevelopment in general and you in particular.”

“So?”

“So how'd she miss your settlement with Schonsy on the fire?”

I wanted to say it like that, watch for his reaction. He was as animated as a freeze-frame.

“I don't see what a cop's fall has to do with any of this here.”

“You don't.”

“No,” said Dykestra. “He's an old guy, carrying this young kid down some stairs. He don't watch where he's going.”

“Through the smoke, you mean?”

“Through whatever the fuck was going on that night.”

“Yet you settled with him.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I settled it.”

“Insurance company involved?”

“You kidding? You know what they want for insurance on them four-deckers? They're wood. Fifty, sixty years old. Cost more in premiums than I gross in rents.”

“Then where's the pressure to settle? Why not let him sue you, drag it out a few years before you've got to write the check?”