Swan Dive - Jeremiah Healy (14 page)

She shook her head. "John, it doesn’t make
sense. The real killer should have been planning this kind of thing
for months to pull it off right. You say you only met Marsh on
Friday, three days before the murders."

"That’s right."

"So how could anybody work that fast, take care
of you so perfectly, then bungle the killings themselves, shooting
only the woman and not both of them?"

"Nancy, I swear to you, I don’t know."

"You don’t even have a plausible theory. I can
see why Holt and the boys wouldn’t buy your story."

"That doesn’t bother me. What would bother me
is your not buying it."

She looked at me for a minute. "What does Murphy
think?"

"He won’t talk to me. I saw him after Holt
questioned me, but there really isn’t anything he can do. To use
his words, how can he tell Holt I didn’t stage things to kill Marsh
when Murphy’s way of knowing that is how much better I handled an
earlier killing."

"Maybe I ought to call Murphy and commiserate
with him."

"Is that a lawyer’s way of admitting she
believes me too?"

She set down her now empty glass. "You know
something, John? I spend all day anticipating answers and revising
questions to keep witnesses enough off balance that maybe they tell
something close to the truth and not their convenient version of what
happened. But I guess that has to be the difference here, doesn’t
it? I can’t assume you’re lying, because that would mean you set
me up to alibi you and that would mean that everything I want to
believe about you and me has gone up in smoke. On the other hand,
your story makes so little sense that somebody as smart as you are
would have done it better if he was trying to deceive anybody."

"So now the lawyer believes me?"

"No."

"No?"

"No. The lawyer believed you about halfway
through. When you kept telling me what you thought happened without
stopping to find out what I already told the police."

"For the lawyer that makes sense. But I have to
know that Nancy believed me from the beginning, from when I just said
I didn’t do it."

She kneeled down next to me on the cushion. She
hugged me and I hugged back.

Kissing me on the ear, she
said, "You are the most aggravating man I have ever met,"
but I think she was smiling when she said it.

* * *

I left Nancy’s a few minutes later. I was nearly to
my parking space behind the condo when I realized I hadn’t even
thought of stopping to see Beth. At Nancy’s, I was only a few
blocks away, and it never occurred to me. No big thing, but . . .

I was still thinking about it when I got out of the
car. There was a real stink coming from over by our trash cans. It
was nearly dark, and I’d had about enough of garbage for a while.
Then I heard the groaning.

Hurrying toward the cans, I started to gag from the
smell when I saw the feet, with shoes and socks still on, wiggle a
bit. I bent down, covering my mouth and nose with my hand. A
barrel-chested black man was lying on his back, eyes closed in a face
like a clay mask formed by a clumsy child. Then he opened his eyes
and smiled with both his remaining teeth. He brought a .45 from down
the side of his leg up into my chest. Another black, tall and
spiffily dressed, came out from the shadows leveling a chromed Colt
Python with a six-inch barrel. The second man spoke, his Caribbean
accent thick and lilting. "Terdell, they tell us the mon was a
true child of God."

Terdell said, "They right, J.J ."
 

THIRTEEN
-♦-

The Mercedes sedan rode smoothly over the potholes as
Terdell guided us out of the city. I was sitting in the backseat with
J .J., his Colt cocked and just out of lunging range.

Braxley wore a continental-cut, double-breasted suit,
with a linen shirt, silk tie, and matching pocket hankie. His short
hair converged to form the most pronounced widow’s peak I’d ever
seen, a Madison Avenue Dracula. A nasty scar began at the middle of
his left cheek and arched elliptically back toward his left ear
before trailing off at his jawline.

Unfortunately, I realized that the stench that made
me gag at the trash cans came from Terdell. Even in the roomy car,
his body odor was overwhelming.

I said, "Hey, Terdell, they ever make you file
an environmental impact statement?"

J .J. laughed. Terdell swung his head around, his
features bloating into a smile, then turned back to watch the road.

J .J . said, "Mon, you think it bad now, you
best pray Terdell, he don’t fart till we in some fresh air."

Terdell chuckled, saying, "Which one you want me
to hit him with?"I

I said, “Which one?"

"Terdell, he name his farts, so I can pick one.
His favorite is the Doctor J fart."

"The what?"

Terdell said, "The Doctor J fart. On account it
hang in the air so long."

I said to J.J., "How do you stand him?"

"Terdell and me, we the perfect team, mon. The
candy, it just about wipe out my sense of smell, and Terdell, he just
can’t help himself, that the way he is."

We were riding along Columbus Avenue, roughly
paralleling the transit system’s Southwest Corridor I subway
construction effort. "Where are we going?"

"Don’t be too anxious to find out."

Terdell left Columbus and started using streets whose
identifying signs were long gone. A couple of the blocks looked like
news footage of West Beirut. The traffic around us began to lighten.
After another ten minutes, I was pretty sure we were past the city
limits. Then Terdell swerved onto a dirt road that had a lot of deep
ruts, like heavy trucks make. After two hundred yards of bouncing and
yawing, we pulled into a construction area and Terdell brought the
Mercedes to a halt about twenty feet from a poorly lit drop-off
Terdell got out, drew his weapon, and opened my door. I climbed out
my side, J .J. out his.

J.J. looked around, smiled, and said, "Start
walking," gesturing with his Colt in the direction of the slope.

I moved to the brink, stood sideways, and started
down the incline in that hopping, stable way they teach you in basic
training. My shoes immediately began to fill with dirt and pebbles.
At the bottom of the slope I could see huge concrete pipes, six or
eight feet in diameter, some connected with each other at forty-five
or ninety-degree angles, some just lying separate, as though a
giant’s child had tired of the game. Terdell followed me down while
J.J. drew a bead on me from up top. When Terdell could keep his gun
steady on me again, J .J. came down. Careful and professional. Bad
omens.

“
Over there," said J.J .

We walked to an area near the apparent entrance to
the pipe system. There were some makeshift benches, with broken
tools, pieces of lumber, crushed tonic cans, and other debris lying
around.

I glanced back at J.J. The car was out of sight I
behind the top of the slope. "I think Terdell forgot the picnic
basket."

J .J. said, "Word on the street say you in good
with the Boston police. Wouldn’t do for us to have our talk where
they got sway."

Terdell edged around to my right, still holding his
gun.

I said to J.J., “What was it you wanted to talk
about?"

"Mon, you can’t figure that out, you in for a
long evening."

Terdell kept moving, now just out of my peripheral
vision. I heard him bending and scuflling with something on the
ground. I pivoted, but Terdell was already swinging a tive-foot
section of two-by-four that caught me on the right side, belt high. I
went down like the knight in Ivanhoe who’s supposed to lose.

I inhaled deeply. No pain yet, just numbness on the
side. I tested my right leg. It seemed to flex normally.

J.J. said, "You ready to talk with us now?"

"Ask your questions."

"Why you do my mon Marsh?"

"I didn’t."

"Terdell."

I was up a half-count too slow, expecting Terdell to
go for the home run stroke again. Instead, he used the wood the right
way, jabbing like a riot baton into my solar plexus.

I fell backward, staring up at the night sky and
making oomph noises while I tried to remember how to get the
breathing muscles working again.

J .J . said, "Terdell, he can do this all
night."

"All week," said Terdell.

"Now, why you ice my mon Marsh?"

"Set up . . . don’t know who . . ."

J .J. shook his head. "Before I turn Terdell up
another notch, let me explain to you what it is, slick. Marsh, he a
piece of shit. He snort like a pig, and fuck like a goat. But he my
piece of shit. And he have my stuff on him like two hours before he
got the deads. I know, because I give it to him. And that means the
dude who did him has my stuff now. And I want it."

"You want to . . . hear me out . . . or just
raise blisters . . . on Babe Ruth here?"

J.J. uncocked the Colt and scratched his ear with the
front sight. "Talk. I like what I hear, might be you get a
break."

I levered up on one elbow, which seemed to open my
lungs a little more. "I never met Marsh till Friday morning ....
A lawyer I know asked me to bodyguard against him .... "

Terdell giggled and spit.

". . . Marsh killed his little girl’s cat, and
I called him on it .... I left him at his house on Friday afternoon,
alive and well .... That’s the last I ever saw of him."

"Street say your gun was in the hotel room."

"Somebody mugged me that afternoon. Took cash
and the gun .... I was never in the hotel room and never even met . .
. the girl he was with."

"I’m supposed to believe that?"

“
If you’re smart."

"Why?"

“
Because if you’re right, if I did kill Marsh and
take the coke, I’d sure as hell . . . have planned it better and
cleaner. And I would have had twenty-four hours to come up . . . with
a better story than this."

Braxley slapped the barrel of the Colt lovingly in
the palm of his off hand. "Mon, you know what that stuff worth,
street value out in the ’burbs?"

"Where the users can get it without risking a
drive into . . . the wrong parts of the city?"

"You got it. Two-fifty easy, maybe three, if
Marsh know his customers and step on it different for each."

"Why is that your problem? . . . You can get
another delivery boy up there, can’t you?"

Braxley fumed. "It is my problem—shit,
Terdell, hit this mon another one."

I wasn’t near ready. I stumbled on the way up, and
took a solid thump just at the tricep-shoulder intersection on the
right side. It spun me around, with Terdell thrusting to my stomach
as I squared up with him again. I dropped to all fours, quelling the
shudders I felt starting inside me.

"Like I was saying, it is my problem because I
give Marsh the credit. I ought to kill you now, letting you hear
that, damage it would do to my reputation, word gets out. But Marsh,
even with all his shit, he been steady for two, three years, which is
a long time in this business, and the one time he step out of line,
Terdell, he put Marsh in the hospital and Marsh, he learn his lesson.
So when Marsh tell me he going through the divorce shit, and ask me
for credit, I get the dumbs and let him have the stuff without the
buy-money. Now I don’t have the stuff which I have paid for, and I
don’t have Marsh’s buy-money. I have suppliers that expect me to
take on more stuff next week, and I was counting on Marsh to pull me
through." Braxley recocked the Colt and pointed it at me. "Now
I’m counting on you."

"I don’t have the stuff . . . and I don’t
know who does."

"You still got it wrong, mon. I don’t have the
stuff and I expect you to get it for me."

"Somebody ransacked Marsh’s house .... "

"Stuff wasn’t there. Video case he carry it
around in gone, too."

That didn’t sound right. "What about the
camera?"

"Terdell?"

I braced myself, but Terdell just talked. "I was
looking for the case, but I don’t remember seeing no camera,
neither."

J .J. said, "Detective mon, you blowing smoke.
That camera case was with Marsh when I seen him Monday before he got
done. He put my stuff in it, like always. I didn’t see no camera
with him."

"What about a suitcase?"

"Suitcase?"

"Yeah. Cops said one of the hotel people . . .
saw Marsh come in with a suitcase that night."

"They did, be the first time anybody ever check
into the Barry with luggage." J.J . and Terdell laughed.

Then J .J . said, "Terdell, I’m going up to
the car for a toot. Then we going to find out just how much more he
know. Give this mon another tap, hold him while I’m gone."

Braxley holstered his piece while I tried to
straighten up and parry. Terdell was already over me, this time using
the wood just to push me onto my back. Then he put the end of the
two-by-four squarely in the center of my chest and leaned into it. My
breastbone bowed with the pressure, and I thought crazily about
biology class and how the butterfly must feel when the needle is
going in. Then Terdell eased off, suddenly driving the end of the
wood to my jaw. I almost lost consciousness, and the stink from his
being so close wasn’t helping any.