Shallow Graves - Jeremiah Healy (5 page)

John?

"I'm okay. And you're probably right. I'll see
you soon, huh?"

I'll be here.

We laughed together as the
fishermen below us upped anchor and putted off. I wondered if they
could see the rainbow. Or even feel it.

* * *

The apartment house at Number 10 Falmouth Street
might still be taken for the single-family town house it probably
once was, one of many in a part of the South End where the byways
were named after towns on Cape Cod. From the front, the building
itself was dull red brick, bowfront rather than bay windows on all
three floors, trapezoid lintel blocks over each bowfront section. The
front entrance was the height of a ten-step stoop above street level.
The elevation of the entrance gave the basement a daylight effect, a
separate smaller door leading into it. A low iron railing, painted
black, enclosed the front of the house, separating it symbolically
from the sidewalk. I say symbolically because there were no bars on
the windows, not even across the openings at basement level.

The South End never quite caught on during the yuppie
boom. Back Bay, where I lived in the doctor's condo, was the first to
be renovated, followed by the waterfront around Faneuil Hall and then
Beacon Hill below the State House. But there was always a damper on
the South End. Too many drugs, too many fires, too many homeless long
before they were everywhere. As a result, you had one block of
rehabbed town houses straight out of Mary Poppins bordering another
block of dehabbed crackhouses straight out of the South Bronx.

I opened the gate and climbed the steps. Four
doorbell buttons, three of them labeled. The front door was locked,
but from the handle it looked like a spring job, no bolt. Through a
glass panel I could see it was the only secured entry, the staircase
to the second floor lying behind an opened, inner door. Probably an
internal buzzer system tied into the bell buttons. I was thinking
that Empire should be glad it didn't have the landlord on this one
when I remembered the building was owned by the dead woman's family.

I examined the bells. The top button was captioned
"Dani, M. T." Expecting nothing, I tried it and got what I
expected. Next was the unlabeled one. Nothing again. Next was "Fagan,
S.," which I took to be "Sinead," the other model Holt
had mentioned. Still nothing. The bottom button said "Super."
A four-unit building probably didn't need its own superintendent, but
landlords had a tendency to own several properties in the same
neighborhood and to put the manager up in one of them. I pushed the
bottom button and got nothing a fourth time.

I walked down to the super's separate entrance and
knocked. No answer. I climbed back to sidewalk level and looked up at
the building. No shade or drape moved abruptly. I went out the gate,
then down the block and around to the alley behind the building.

A lot of South End houses have postage stamp
backyards, with patios off the basement door. This block was more
like Back Bay, with the house almost abutting on the alley itself. No
parking, maybe ten feet between where the fire escape's raised last
flight would come down and where two big trash cans stood covered
against the wall and near the back door. The escape itself was black
except for rust spots here and there. My eyes followed it up the rear
wall. The raised last flight retracted to a landing outside the
window on the elevated first floor. The escape then switchbacked to a
landing at the second floor window, a third flight ending in a
landing outside the third-floor window. Mau Tim Dani's apartment.
There were no bars on any of the back windows either. Christ, these
folks were asking for it.

Somebody nine feet tall probably could reach and pull
down the raised, last flight of fire escape. The green trash cans
were ribbed plastic and looked sturdy enough to support my weight. I
had just positioned the second can under the escape when the basement
door opened.

A man dressed in droopy pants and a strappy T-shirt
put one foot over the threshold, keeping the other inside the door.
Maybe five six, he had the face of a pug from the club lights at
union halls in Dorchester. Both eyebrows had divots missing, and the
nose detoured more than once on its way to his mouth. The left ear
was cauliflowered, the right loppy, like the Velveteen Rabbit. His
hair was black, thinning unevenly at the crown, scruffy around the
sides. Pushing fifty, his head flicked right, like he was ducking a
punch, and he sniffed twice in quick succession through his nose.

"Whaddaya think you're doing?"

"You the superintendent?"

"Who wants to know?"

"John Cuddy." I reached into a pocket for
my ID. "I tried the buzzer and knocked."

He brought the other foot outside and stood in front
of me. I handed him the holder, open. He stretched out his arms and
studied it.

"I'm a private investigator, Mr .... ?"

He looked up from the ID, then down again, although
there was no picture on it to compare against me.

"Whaddaya want from me?"

I extended my hand for the holder, which he gave back
carefully. "I represent the company that insured the life of the
woman who died here."

"The . . . ?"

"She was a model. Mau Tim Dani?"

This time he winced before flick, sniff/sniff. "I
don't know nothing about that. Nothing."

"That's okay. I'd appreciate your letting me see
the apartment, though."

"What for?"

"She was killed there, Mr .... "

"Don't mister me, pal. Okay?"

Not my best start ever. "Okay. You got a first
name?"

"Yeah. Carrnine."

"All right. Carmine--"

"But everybody calls me Ooch."

"Ooch?"

"Yeah. From when I was in the ring. The other
guy'd hit me, everybody went 'Ooch! You see that shot?' "

I laughed politely. "You fight, you're going to
get hit, right?"

"You can take it from me."

"So, can I get a look at the place?"

Flick, sniff/sniff. "No way."

"I have a letter here from the company."

"I don't know from no letter. The owners told me
nobody gets in without they say it's okay."

"
You let the police in, didn't you?"

"No. The others let them in. I wasn't here."

"Where were you?"

"Over to the gym. They was going to have a party
up there."

He gestured toward the elevated first floor. "They
get loud, the music, you know? I get itchy, gets too loud down
there." He gestured back toward the basement door.

"Where do you work out?"

"The Y. Over by Northeastern. Ain't too many
real gyms left."

"What time you get over there?"

He shrugged. "I worked out, is all."

"Then came back here?"

"Uh-unh. Had a few beers along the way. Didn't
want to get back till they was all out for dinner."

"I thought there was supposed to be a party?"

"Yeah, but Sinead, she said Tina and them were
going out to eat after. So I could come back then, it wouldn't be
loud no more."

"Tina?"

"Huh?"

"Who's Tina?"

"Tina's . . .” Flick, sniff/sniff. "Tina's
dead."

"I thought her name was Mau Tim?"

"That's what she called herself, for the
modeling and all."

"What was her real name?"

"Tina. Whaddaya, deaf or something?"

I smiled. "How can I get in touch with the
owner?"

Ooch stopped. "I'l1 call them, let them know you
were asking."

I reached into my side pocket, found a business card.
"You can call me there. Leave a message if I'm not in."

Taking the card, Ooch said, "Right, right."
Then he pointed with it. "You don't mind, you put those cans
back where you found them."

"Sure." I started moving one of them.

"The city, they raise hell with me, those cans
ain't right along the building 'cept for Tuesdays and Fridays."

I came back for the second can. "Trash days."

"Right."

I replaced the second can. "So, Tuesday and
Friday mornings, you put the cans at the alley, the truck picks up
the trash, and you put these cans back against the wall."

"Right, right."

"And you did that a week ago Friday, too."

"A course I did."

"And they were still against the wall after the
police were here that right?"

"Yeah. I even checked, after they went."
Flick, sniff/sniff. "Fucking cops, you can't trust them to do
nothing right."

"When you checked the cans, did you find
anything else back here?"

A blank expression. "Like what?"

"A rake, maybe?"

"A rake?" Ooch's eyes went around the
bricked space of his and the adjoining buildings. "You see any
lawns back here, pal?"

"How about a push broom, even a piece of rope
with a hook or bar tied to it?"

"No. Whaddaya, crazy?"

I looked up the fire escape. "Too bad you
weren't here."

"Huh?"

"Earlier that night, when Tina was killed. Too
bad you weren't here. You might have stopped it."

A pained expression, like he hadn't thought about
that before. Then flick, sniff/sniff. "I was here, none of this
woulda happened to her."

Ooch got weepy. "I was here, I woulda killed the
bum did this. Tina was a good girl."

He moved back into the doorway, drawing the strap of
the T-shirt up to dry his eyes before closing the door behind him. I
stood in the alley for a while. Holt might have been lying to me back
at Homicide. Or maybe he just didn't throw me a "little chunk"
about what his people found behind the building. Staring at the back
wall of Number 10 Falmouth Street, I tried to figure out how a
burglar could get up to Mau Tim Dani's apartment by the fire escape
without using the cans, or a rake or something, to pull down that
raised last flight.
 
 

-5-

I DROVE FROM THE SOUTH END
TOWARD MY NEIGHBORHOOD. IN A parking lot on Newbury Street, a guy was
maneuvering a large vehicle that had to be seen to be appreciated. Or
believed. A brown, swaybacked tube of a cabin like a hot dog was laid
partially inside a yellow chassis and frame like a bun. A meat
company's name was printed on the side of the cabin. The passengers
could see through Flash Gordon windows at the front and use a hatch
where a panel truck's door would be. I tried not to embarrass the
driver as I went by and headed the Prelude back to its space a few
blocks away.

* * *

The address Harry Mullen gave me for the
Lindqvist/Yulin Agency was on upper Newbury, but when I got to the
numbered front door, there was no sign on the building that the
agency was located inside. The outside door was unlocked, however,
and the mailboxes in the foyer showed a listing for both the agency
and a "LINDQVIST, on the next floor. I pressed the button by the
agency name, and the inner door buzzed long enough to let me pass
through it. I climbed stairs, one office suite to a floor, until I
reached the fourth level and a yellow six-panel with brass knob that
had the agency name on a brass plate. I knocked and a male voice said
to come in.

As I swung the door inward, I saw a man about my age
and height in blue jeans, turtleneck, and a corduroy Norfolk jacket.
He was good-looking in a college professor way, but with a weak chin
and shaggy hair, as though he'd told the barber to give him a Beatles
look, then said, what the hell, take off another two inches. The hair
seemed black and silver, but more like each strand was half each
color. He used a telephone receiver to beckon me into the reception
area while his free hand reached for a loose-leaf binder on a shelf
behind a desk.

The man was saying, "Right, Kyle. Trunks,
athletic wear . . . Half day guaranteed at a thousand . . . No, plus
agency fee. Any problem if it runs over? . . . Over half a day, what
do you think? . . . Good, good . . . No, no your legs are fine. You
get a chance, you might work on the upper body a little . . . No,
generally it's fine, Kyle, you're in great shape, but for this one .
. . Right, right, a swimwear catalog, not just a department store —
— what? . . . No, no tanner than you are now. Right, right."

I assumed I was watching George Yulin in action. I
decided to wait until he got off the phone. The reception area had a
love seat and two barrel chairs in complementary colors. I tried the
love seat. On the beige walls were enlarged photos, all black and
white, matted but not framed. A couple of advertisements were in
stand-up cutouts, backed by cardboard. Most of the models shown were
female, but three were male. One of the men flexed the kind of
physique I might have had in college if
I'd been
eating complex carbohydrates instead of drinking them.