Shallow Graves - Jeremiah Healy (9 page)

"Up in her bathroom, taking a shower."

"Before that."

"I dunno. On a shoot somewheres, probably."

"Where?"

"I dunno. She did quite a lot of shoots."

Quite a lot. "George Yulin said she wasn't
working that day. Called in, but wasn't on a job."

"Then I dunno."

"How did you and Mau Tim come to live in the
same building?"

"She was living there, there was this other
apartment open, so she says do I want it and I says yeah."

"I understand her family owns the building."

Fagan stopped. Then, "Far as I know. I just give
Ooch the rent money, he sends it in."

"The super."

"Yeah."

"You pay him in cash?"

"That's the deal. What the fuck does this have
to do with Mau Tim?"

"Okay. That night — the night she was killed,
when did you last see her?"

"I didn't."

"Didn't see her?"

"No."

"Did you talk with her?"

"I called Mau when I got in. She said she'd be
coming down for the party later, was there anything I needed."

"When was this?"

"When I got home."

"When was that?"

"I dunno. It was a nice warm day out, so I
walked."

"Approximately."

"I dunno. Five, five-thirty, maybe."

"What did you tell her?"

"Tell her?"

I began to empathize with Chris the photographer.
"When she asked you if you needed anything, what did you tell
her?"

"Oh, I says no, it's your fucking birthday, for
chrissakes."

"What did she say?"

Another stop. "Not much. She had to call some
people, maybe."

"Who?"

"I dunno."

I didn't see Holt giving me a look at the telephone
company's local line records when he did get them.

"What did you do after you hung up with Mau
Tim?"

"I took a shower, trimmed my nails, turned on
the stereo. What the fuck — "

"Did you talk to her after that?"

"No."

"Did you hear anything from her apartment?"

"We're like a floor apart. You can't hear
nothing except the water."

"The water?"

"The water in the pipes. Mau Tim took a shower,
I'd hear it in my kitchen pipes."

"And did you hear that?"

"Sure. I was in my kitchen, I can hear the water
through the pipes."

"That night?"

"Yeah, that night."

"When?"

Fagan huffed. "I dunno what fucking time. Look,
I don't keep looking at my watch, you know?"

"Okay. At some point, you hear the water in the
pipes."

"Right. I'm in my kitchen, getting things ready
for the party, and I hear the water and then Oz comes in."

"Oscar Puriefoy."

"Yeah. Oz."

"And he comes into your apartment?"

"Yeah."

I thought about the raised last flight of the fire
escape. "He's got a key?"

The stop again. "No. No, he don't."

"Then how did he get in?"

"How do you think? He rang me from outside, and
I opened the door for him."

"Go on."

"Awright, so Oz is in my apartment, right? So I
says to him, go get us some wine, I forgot."

"You forgot the wine for the party."

"Yeah."

"How old are you, Ms. Fagan?"

A stop. "Nineteen."

Underage to buy the wine even if she hadn't
"forgotten" it.

"Then what?"

"Then Oz goes out and — — "

"Wait a second. Is the water still running?"

"The water?"

"From upstairs through the pipes in your
kitchen."

"I think so. It was just like, water, awright?
Besides, I had quite a lot to do."

Lindqvist's influence again. "So Puriefoy goes
out for wine."

"Right."

"And you give him your key?"

"No. No, he don't have no key, understand?"

"Okay. How long is he gone?"

"I dunno."

"Can you estimate?"

"Ten, fifteen minutes maybe."

"Then what?"

"He comes back."

"And you let him in and all."

"Right."

"What happened then?"

"Oz is in the kitchen, opening the wine, and
then Larry Shin comes by."

"Larry Shinkawa?"

"Yeah."

"He rings the bell — "

" — and I let him in."

"Shinkawa was invited to the party."

"Sure. Him and Mau was going out."

"That night?"

"No, no. We was all going out after. They was,
like, 'dating,' you know?"

Fagan said the word like I might have heard it back
when I was young. I wondered when it had turned sour. "Who else
was coming to the party?"

The stop. "That was it."

"Nobody else was invited?"

"Well, this other guy was invited, but he
couldn't come."

"What other guy?"

"This other model."

"His name?"

"Quinn."

"First name?"

"That is his first name. Quinn Cotter."

"Where does he live?"

"I dunno."

"How'd you invite him?"

"Saw him on a shoot. Why?"

I no longer even remotely envied Chris the
photographer.

"This Cotter work for Lindqvist/Yulin, too?"

"Yeah."

"Why didn't Cotter come to the party?"

"I dunno. Ask him."

"All right. How about a guy named Shawn?"

"
Shawn?"

"Yes. I'm not sure which spelling."

"What do you mean?"

Fagan seemed blank, and for just a second I wasn't
sure she knew what 'spelling' meant. "Did you ever hear Mau Tim
talk about a Shawn?"

"
No."

"Somebody said he was her first boyfriend."

"News to me."

"All right. You, Puriefoy, and now Shinkawa are
in your apartment. Then what?"

"Larry Shin says, where's Mau Tim, and I says
she musta just got outta the shower, and he says, let's go up and
surprise her."

"Did you?"

"Uh-unh. He did, not me."

"Puriefoy?"

"No, him neither. Just Larry Shin."

"Then what?"

"
Larry Shin goes up, awright, and like two
seconds later he's down the stairs, saying that Mau Tim ain't
answering."

"You remember what he said?"

"
N0, just like he was knocking and hollering for
her, and she didn't answer him."

"What did you do?"

Chris the photographer called over. "Sinead?"

"Right." She stood up. "That's it."

"Wait. What did you and Puriefoy do?"

"I don't wanna talk about that, awright?"

I didn't want to see this woman again if I could help
it. "Did you ever talk with Mau Tim about anything that was
bothering her?"

"No."

"How about going to New York?"

The stop. "Everybody talks about going to New
York. It don't mean nothing."

Chris said, "Sinead, how about it?"

"Awright, awright." Her sunglasses slipped
as she looked down at me. "That's all I can tell you."

"Sinead, you seem to have been her best friend.
Is there anything else she talked about with you? Boyfriends, family,
anything?"

Fagan righted the glasses. Very evenly, she said, "We
didn't talk about family, awright?"

Sinead trotted off to rejoin the others at the beach.
 
 

-8-

I TREATED MYSELF TO LUNCH AT THE HARVARD BOOKSTORE 
CAFE, a place where you can think about eating while browsing or
think about browsing while eating. A friend of mine named Moncef
designed the menu there. He and his wife Donna used to own
L'Espalier, the best restaurant in the city. A few years ago, they
pulled up stakes and moved to Virginia, to raise their family in a
calmer environment. Moncef still comes up to Boston once in a while,
and he was there that day. We shot the breeze for half an hour over a
plate of perfectly stir-fried turkey and vegetables.

To walk off lunch, I crossed the Public Garden and
the Common to my office on Tremont. I'm in an old building, and my
door on the third floor has a pebbled-glass top with "John
Francis Cuddy, Confidential Investigations" stenciled on it.
Behind the door is a desk, a desk chair, and two client chairs. Two
windows overlook the Park Street Subway Station, and my license hangs
from a wall I painted myself to save a few bucks on the monthly rent.
The rest of the office could be carted off in the front basket of a
bicycle.

I was upstairs for five minutes and in my desk chair
four when there was a knock on the door. "It's open."

A guy came in wearing a knee-length leather coat over
a navy blue suit. In his mid-forties, he was five seven and pushing
two hundred pounds. A comb had recently slicked his black hair to the
sides in a Teen Angel look. The face was pudgy, the complexion
reminding me of an all-weather radial. A toothpick stuck out from one
comer of his mouth, the corner curling in a half-smile.

He said, "How ya doin'," as a statement
rather than a question and then settled into one of my client's
chairs, the leather coat squeaking against the wood.

I said, "You want to take your coat off?"

"We ain't gonna be staying that long."

"So maybe I should put my coat on."

"You don't want to catch cold on the way to the
car."

"Where are we heading, we aren't going to be
here that long?"

"Some friends of mine, they want to have a
little talk with you."

"And if I don't exactly feel like going with
you?"

A shrug so small the coat gave just one tiny squeak.
"I leave, come back with two associates, and then we go see my
friends."

"And if two more aren't enough?"

The only part of his expression that changed was the
toothpick. It rolled to the other corner of his mouth. "Then I
come back with four more. Sooner or later, you have that talk with my
friends."

"I step on some toes somewhere?"

"I don't know. I'm just transportation."

If he were just "transportation/' he'd be
leaning against a car downstairs, and somebody else would be talking
with me. I thought over what I'd been doing the last couple of weeks
and came up with only one possibility.

I said, "Where are we going?"

"You find out when we get there."

I shook my head very slowly. That brought a good
smile.

"Hey-ey-ey," he said, dragging out the
syllable. "Look, we was gonna clip you, we wouldn't send
somebody you don't know, would we?"

"
You would if you don't have anybody I know."

"You raise a good point." He sat back into
the chair, folding his hands over his stomach, lifting his shoulders
once and letting them sag into the chair, a symphony of squeaks from
the coat. When I didn't say anything, he waited thirty seconds or so,
then said, "You come now, we beat the afternoon rush."

"These days, there's always traffic."

He rolled the toothpick back to where it started,
then used the thumb and forefinger of his left hand to pull back the
lapels of his coat and jacket. Letting me see he wasn't reaching for
anything lethal. He pulled out a long wallet from the inside pocket
of the jacket, extracted a plastic card, and sent it across the desk
to me.

"My license. A picture of me and everything."

I looked at the driver's license. It seemed
legitimate. Social Security number, date of birth. The photo was
recent, the expiration date four birthdays away. The address was in
the North End, Boston's Italian-American section.

I read off, "Zuppone, Primo T."

"Yeah, only you gotta pronounce it 'Zoo-po-ny'.
"

"Primo, how many of these do you have?"

The small shrug again. "Six, seven. But that
there's the real one."

I couldn't help but grin at him. "People
underestimate you a lot, Primo?"

That got the half-smile. "Just once, usually."