Snapshot (15 page)

“What's your friend's name?”

“That's not what I'm here to talk about.”

“Talk about what you're here to talk about,” I said dryly.

“I want to know what you're doing for my wife.”

“Talk some more,” I suggested.

“I expect some answers.”

I stared at my desk top, glanced around the room, and sighed. I hadn't fed the parakeet in days, and the cat was probably poised to claw me as soon as I stepped into the kitchen.

“Fifteen eighty-eight,” I recited. “That's the year of the Spanish Armada. I don't know why I remember that one, but it's up there with 1620 and 1492 as far as answers go.”

“You don't take this seriously.”

“Ah.”

“Young woman,” he said, “you are going to take this seriously before I'm finished.”

“Oh,” I said, “and why is that?”

“If my wife hired you to spy on me, you'll be very sorry. You people are licensed by the state.” He hesitated before the word
people
, made it sound like
vermin
.

“My wife is under the care of a psychiatrist,” he continued. “She is not a well woman and I won't have her taken advantage of by some rumor-mongering private eye.”

He'd lost a child not four months ago, but I found myself having empathy trouble.

“My wife, much as I, uh, love her, is not a completely truthful woman at the best of times. And now, well—you have to understand where she's coming from.”

I wasn't about to tell him anything, but if he wanted to confide in me that was a different story. I eased my heels out of my shoes, waggled my toes.

“It's not often you come across a spoiled child of forty,” he said, snapping out his words, “but that's my Emily. Up until—up until our disaster—I don't think she ever wanted anything she couldn't have. You've seen her type before, haven't you? Rich, pretty, homecoming queen. And now she's behaving as if she were the only person in the universe to lose a child, the only one to suffer. She acts as if … as if she's completely forgotten that Rebecca was my daughter as well.

“Emily's the one who's frozen me out, not the other way around I'm not an unfeeling man. She may have made it sound like I'm uncaring, hut it's not as if she's played the perfect little spouse.”

His voice shook, but he pretended to cough and firmed it up. He put a hand to his cheek, rubbed it as if he were checking to see whether or not he'd shaved recently. “Good God,” he murmured softly, his voice gaining volume as his chagrin turned to anger, “this is what she's driven me to, babbling in front of a—I beg your pardon, young woman. I shouldn't have come here at all.”

“You're probably right about that,” I agreed.

“Dammit.” He squeezed syllables out from between clenched teeth. “One more chance, all right? What exactly did my wife pay you for? What service do you offer for a thousand dollars?”

I reached over and picked up the telephone.

“What are you doing?”

“Calling your wife,” I said, jamming my heels back into my shoes. I was actually punching Roz's upstairs number because it's nice to have a karate expert around when you're going to throw somebody out of your house.

“Stop.”

“It's ringing.”

“I don't want her to—”

“Don't you think it's time to go?”

He gave me the kind of look actors use to signify that they'll get even someday, and crossed to the hall. I opened the door for him, locked all three locks as soon as he'd departed. Then I leaned against the wall.

Why had I thought of actors? Something about the performance hadn't rung true. Words or emotions? Which?

“My wife, much as I, uh, love her
…” Had his hesitation spoken of more than Yankee embarrassment at a declaration of affection? Did he love his wife? He'd seemed convinced that I'd been hired to spy on him. Query: When does a wife hire a private eye to follow her husband? Response: When she believes he's having an affair. Less so nowadays, what with divorce-law reform. Still, evidence of infidelity can be a potent weapon in child-custody cases.

Here, there was no longer a child to consider.

I freed my aching toes and padded around the house barefoot, digging through the daily rubble until I found the
Globe
neatly folded on the hall table. Nearby, Roz had hung a glistening portrait of two large onions draped by a bunch of limp parsley.

No good. Monday's paper didn't carry the stock quotes since the exchanges were closed on Sundays. Slovenly housekeeping, however, has its bonuses. I located the Saturday paper under a chair, took it to my desk, and ran a finger down the tiny print of the Stock Exchange listings. CCO, maybe. I found a C COR on NASDAQ, but that was corporation, not company. My eyes started to hurt. I gave up the tables and read the entire section, front to back, and all the miscellany in between. A columnist advised me to
Keep My Stock Records Up to Date
. I learned that health-care funds slumped in the first quarter.

Nothing about Cee Co.

T.C. yowled while I yanked the flip-top ring and presented him with a tin of Fancy Feast. I put a big pot of water on to boil for spaghetti. I use sauce straight from the jar, with a dollop of red wine to give the illusion of homemade. It's not great, but it's quick. Eating takes enough time out of life. Who has hours for cooking?

I practiced some tricky guitar riffs from Rory Block's new
Ain't I a Woman
tape, listening for the telephone, the doorbell.

I didn't hear from Tina Sukhia.

I didn't get a package from Emily Woodrow.

My fingers stopped picking in the middle of a song while I considered Tony's assertion that his fiancée was a fine nurse. Had he sounded overly defensive? He'd asked if I was from the Q.A. Department—Quality Something. Quality Analysis? Quality Assurance?

And what about the timing? When exactly had Tina left JHHI?

A death and a departure. No reason for them to be related.

My fingers chose an old Robert Johnson tune:

I got a kindhearted woman, do anything in this world for me,

I got a kindhearted woman, do anything in this world for me,

But these evil-hearted women, man, they will not let me be.

17

I spent the next morning juggling phone books, checking out variants of Cee Co., riling secretaries with useless calls, and finding no trace of the company that employed Tina Sukhia, who, for her part, neither answered her phone nor responded to the messages I left on her answering machine.

When the doorbell rang just after two o'clock, I ran a hand through hair uncombed since volleyball practice and smoothed my ratty gray sweatshirt over black jeans that were ripped at both knees and faded from too many go-rounds in the washer.

I peered out the peephole and saw Mooney, his weight evenly balanced in classic traffic-cop stance. I figured he'd come about the license plate so I started unchaining chains and unbolting bolts. No quick dives into the powder room necessary; Mooney's used to my come-as-you-are appearance.

He wore a beige cotton sweater, chinos, and sneakers. Loose comfy stuff he could run in if he had to. It was nice of him to come by with the plate rundown. He could have called. I grinned when I opened the door. He didn't smile back. “Can I come in?” he said somberly. No sparkle in his eyes. No handshake, no mock-brotherly squeeze.

“Something happen to Paolina?”

“No. I must look pretty grim.”

I sighed. “You do. You want a beer?”

“Orange juice?”

“Okay.” That meant he was working. Not working, Mooney drinks beer. He followed me into the kitchen and scraped a chair across the linoleum as he pulled it away from the table.

“This guy Paolina's seeing is a known child molester, right?”

“What guy? Sit down,” Mooney said. “It's not about Paolina.”

I sat.

Mooney drank juice.

“You gonna break it to me gently?”

“You went to visit Tina Sukhia yesterday.”

I quickly cast my mind back to the street outside her apartment. Had I strolled into somebody's surveillance? I remembered the stale marijuana smell in the tiny apartment, but I didn't think cops cared about marijuana anymore, not with crack around. Not with heroin, crystal, speed, PCP, and an Uzi in every other high-school locker.

Mooney said, “Her boyfriend gave us your card.”

“Why?”

“I guess because of the coincidence—you showing up, her dying.”

Dying.

“No,” I heard myself say.

“That must mean no, it's not a coincidence—because I just saw the body, and yes, she sure is dead.”

“Hell,” I said, and then “damn,” over and over. It sounded like my voice was coming from far away, working on its own, without the cooperation of my lips or larynx.

“So I need to know why you wanted to talk to her. And you're gonna tell me because it's part of an official police investigation.”

“Homicide?” I asked, stalling, knowing Mooney wouldn't be here if it wasn't.

“A definite possibility.”

“But not a certainty?”

“Listen when I talk. I said possibility.”

“How likely?”

“Likely enough that you ought to answer me instead of playing games.”

“Shit.”

“So do we talk here?”

“Or what? You gonna haul me down to the station house, use a rubber hose?”

“I'm not in the mood, Carlotta.”

“Sorry. Me, I'm in a great mood.”

“I coulda sent somebody else. I come all the way over here and you're gonna give me crap?”

“I work for a living, Moon. Same as you. My clients deserve a little discretion.”

“Any client who sent you to see Sukhia better not leave the jurisdiction.”

“Why don't you tell me how Tina Sukhia—a lady I never met in my life—died? I haven't read the papers yet.”

“That's not how this song goes.”

“You want to keep the details from me because you think I killed her and then left my business card with the boyfriend—who told me yesterday, by the way, that he was the fiancé.”

“Boyfriend, fiancé. They were shacked up, is what.”

“You use phrases I haven't heard in ten years. Shacked up.”

“You use phrases I don't hear much either,” he said. “Except from hookers.” Mooney was brought up a strict Catholic. Women did not swear, not even a discreet
hell
or
damn
. They didn't become cops, either.

“The boyfriend-fiancé a suspect?” I asked.

“Seeing as it happened in a hospital, and we can't place him there, no more than anybody else.”

“JHHI?”

“Good old Helping Hand,” he said.

“She worked there.”

“You working for them?”

“Them?”

“The hospital?”

It's not that I mind telling lies, it's that I know it's not smart to lie to Mooney. Withhold information, maybe. But he's got an incredibly good mental lie detector.

“And why would the hospital hire me?” I asked.

“Nice try,” he said.

“Come on, Mooney.”

“It looks very much like the lady overdosed on barbiturates.”

“People OD on downers all the time. What's against it being an accident?”

“No evidence she was a user at all.”

“When did she die?”

“Body found about six forty-five this morning. That's all I've got till the M.E. talks.”

“That's probably all you'll ever get then,” I said sympathetically. M.E.'s are pretty useless when it comes to precise time of death. Oh, they can shove thermometers into orifices and plug numbers into equations, but there are too many variables. The more they learn, the less they know.

“It's not even cast in concrete on the six forty-five. Doctors,” Mooney said, raising his eyebrows. “Deaths in hospitals—no matter what the circumstances—cops are considered the last resort. Doctors think there's no such thing as a situation they can't handle.”

“Doctor find her?”

“Nurse. Anne Reese, R.N. Didn't know the victim. Didn't care. Mainly irritated because she was at the end of her shift and wanted to go home.”

“Nice.”

“Like I didn't want to go home, too. But a death's a death. You don't just walk off and leave it.”

“At hospitals they do.”

Mooney made a face.

“You didn't like the nurse,” I said.

“Bingo. And she didn't like me.”

“And you're so charming, Moon. Tell me, the boyfriend see Tina last night?”

“Nope. So he got good and stewed, far as I can tell. Eyes bloodshot, but you can't tell if it's from crying or booze.”

“If Tina was a user, that could be why the hospital let her go,” I said.

“I already thought of that,” Mooney said.

“There could be money in this someplace. Fiancé had new stereo equipment up the wazoo.”

“So?”

I waited for him to mention Tina's new job as a source of the windfall. He didn't.

“The hospital been leaking drugs?” I asked.

“The question crossed my mind,” Mooney admitted.

“Anybody answered it yet?”

“I haven't asked yet. I've got appointments with some docs: Chief of Staff. Chief of Medicine. Chief of Pharmacy. Chief troubleshooter. Probably Chief of PR.”

“But you decided to pick on me first? I'm not gonna give you headaches like some medical big-shot?”

“Carlotta, you know that's not—”

“Mooney, it looks to me like you've got an accidental death, and I don't think my client ought to be hassled about an accidental OD. I don't think I ought to be hassled, either.” While my mouth was saying
accidental
, I have to admit I was thinking
suicide
. Maybe Tina had quit JHHI. But there was also the possibility that the woman had been dismissed. Maybe she'd done something wrong, screwed up so badly that Rebecca Woodrow had died as a result. What do you do for a comeback if your negligence causes the death of a child?