Swan Dive - Jeremiah Healy (16 page)

I went into the bedroom and eased out of the clothes
I was wearing. I found some loose-fitting sweats and carried them
into the bathroom.

I had a purple bruise swirled with red at each place
where Terdell pasted me with the two-by-four. The skin under my chin
from his last shot was broken, but closing over already in that
regenerating, reassuring way skin has. I killed the light and went
into the living room.

Dawkins was sitting back in a deep, comfortable
chair, legs stretched out straight, arms spread-eagled, with a bottle
of Molson’s in his right hand. He was wearing a silk dress shirt
and silk suit, sleeves pushed up to his elbows.

I sat on the couch, leaned back, and closed my eyes.

After about two minutes, Dawkins said, "Murphy
said you a cool one."

"Look, it’s been a long day, and I hurt like
hell. What do you want?"

"Picked up a ripple that J.J. and his man
Terdell out to talk with a guy tonight. Looks like you not their idea
of good conversation."

"Word travels fast."

"Like the wind, babe. Like the wind."

"Just get to it, okay‘?"

"Okay. Marsh’s stuff hasn’t hit the street
yet."

"How do you know?"

"J.J. deals in smallish quantity, but high
quality. If shit that good appeared in somebody else’s merchandise,
I’d know about it."

"Couldn’t a big dealer kind of hide it in his
volume?"

"Yeah, and if he stepped on it enough times,
nobody’d know the difference. But a major player ain’t likely to
deal with whoever did Marsh."

"Couldn’t a major player have taken out Marsh
himself?"

"Not the way it was done. Just be three holes in
the head behind a building somewheres. No need to send him through
the window and mess things up with the Angel."

"You said a major player wouldn’t have dealt
with the killer. Why?"

"Too much risk and no need. The big guys, they
have import and distribution networks make Toyota go green with envy.
Besides, if it did go down that way, we don’t hear about it, ’less
we bust the player with some goods, and the player roll over and give
us the hitter to go easy on the drug charge."

"So where does that leave you?"

"Pawing the ground. A minor player, he’d have
a hard time sitting on the stuff, follow?"

"Not exactly."

"Small fry does Marsh and the Angel, he must
have need of money real bad. Maybe ’cause of a rip-off, maybe
partial to the dog races and into a shy’, whatever. Little guy
can’t afford to just sit on the stuff. He’d have to move it, or
at least put out some feelers to the other small ones, who are
sniffing around for the stuff anyway."

"And nobody’s smelled anything."

"Right."

I stopped for a minute, thinking.

Dawkins said, "Now I bet you wondering why I
been so forthcoming here tonight."

"After our session with Holt, that’s exactly
what I was wondering."

"Holt don’t know about this little visit. And
he ain’t gonna."

"Because you’re not going to tell him and I’m
not going to tell him."

"That’s right. This little visit is my own
idea. I understand from Murphy that you just done him a favor."

"More like a return favor."

"Don’t matter. He thought he trusted you, now
he not so sure."

"I don’t see Murphy sending me messages
through you."

"He ain’t. Like I said, I’m here on my own."

Dawkins came forward, setting his now empty bottle
down deliberately. "Now you listen up. You ask Murphy to run a
guy down. He runs him down with me. Then the guy turns up dead, your
gun at the scene. You got a fairy tale for it stinks worse than
Terdell’s asshole, and all of a sudden some white cops at our level
start slipping the word to some white cops above us that maybe the
Murphy and the Dawkins pulling something cute."

I thought about it. "Especially when Dawkins,
the narc who knows everybody, can’t account for why Marsh’s goods
haven’t hit the street yet."

Dawkins barely moved his head up and down. "You
think you smart, Cuddy. I hope to God you smart enough to follow
this. Murphy got to be a lieutenant by being smart and straight. I
made sergeant by just being smart. Him and me draw good salaries,
benefits, I even got this next weekend off. We got too much into the
department to get shoved into the shit by whatever it is you think
you’re doing."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning you got a file on you now, boy. File
marked ‘Narcotics.' You fuck up the Murphy and me in this, we may
be out of the department, but before I go, I see to it that you found
with dealer-weight snow in your absolute possession and control. And
then you a long time gone to Walpole."

"I thought the Corrections Department called it
‘Cedar Junction’ now."

"A rose by any other name, babe." Dawkins
stood and walked to the door. "There’s something real hinky
here. If you straight, you just might find Marsh’s stuff yourself.
That happens, I’d best be the first man you call."

He closed the door behind him. I thought about J.J .,
Nino, and now Dawkins. If I ever did find Marsh’s stuff, I’d
better have a roll of dimes on me for the phone.
 

FIFTEEN
-♦-

After Dawkins left, I marched ice over the bruised
areas, then went to bed. I slept until nearly nine the next morning,
the hours washing away some of the pain but replacing it two for one
with stiffness. I tried to limber up a little, running or any other
real exercise being out of the question. I found Reena Goldberg in
the White Pages. Her street in the South End was walking distance
from me, but I remembered the block as being nothing but abandoned,
burned-out factories and warehouses. I dialed her number. After five
rings, a strong female voice said, "Hello?"

“
Reena Goldberg?"

"Yes?"

"Ms. Goldberg, I’m investigating the death of
Roy Marsh and—"

"Oh, please! I’ve already told you guys
everything I know. Twice."

Riding the cops’ coattails, I said, "I’ll be
over to you in an hour. Unless this afternoon would be easier for
you?"

She exhaled loudly. "All right. An hour. You
know the address." She hung up before I could ask her what
apartment number, but you can’t have everything. I chose a
short-sleeved sports shirt and some running pants with pockets and
elastic waist to spare the need for a belt. For ten minutes, I
watched out my windows, front and side. My car looked the way I left
it, and I couldn’t see anyone I didn’t want to meet. I hobbled
down the stairs and out the door.

After three blocks, the walking began to loosen up my
injured parts. I felt nearly good by the time I hit Copley Place, an
extravagant hotel-shopping mall complex that helps demarcate
established Back Bay from the transitional South End. Just inside the
Westin Hotel entrance is a magnificent fountain area, with contrived
twin waterfalls that delicately and perpetually drop shimmering walls
of wetness into the retaining pool below. As I got on the escalator
that splits the waterfalls, I saw a man with torn, rolled-up pants
carefully place the last layer of stained outerwear on the edge of
the pool. He waded in, scooping up the coins that the tourists had
tossed in, presumably while making their own wishes.

A middle-aged woman in designer clothes was standing
in front of me on the escalator. Watching the man and wagging her
head, she said, "Can you imagine anyone actually doing that?"

I said, "Maybe he hasn’t eaten for a while."

She looked at me as though I’d just accused Ronald
Reagan of pedophilia, then turned away and clumped up the steps until
she reached the backs of the next highest bunch of people. By the
time I reached the top, a security staffer in a golf blazer was
calling for backup on a walkie-talkie, and I wasn’t feeling so good
anymore.

Goldberg’s block stood basically as I remembered
it, though less of it was actually standing since the last time I was
there. Her address was a gray brick building with a veneered steel
front door someone had tried peeling back without success. Ignoring
an old, jammed buzzer, I pushed a bright nickel one. I waited two
minutes, then pushed it again. There was a clanking noise, then the
door opened. The woman behind it was perspiring and she said, "Don’t
be so impatient. I had to come down from the loft, you know."

"If I hadn’t called first, how would you have
known who it was?"

"If you hadn’t called first, I wouldn’t have
come to the door at all. You want to talk down here or upstairs?"

"Down here" looked like a bombed-out German
aircraft plant. "Let’s try upstairs."

She secured things behind me, including a bolt like
the one the natives used to keep King Kong on his side of the wall.
"Come on then."

We went up a central, industrial-strength spiral
staircase for the equivalent of four floors, then through a scalable
trapdoor into her loft. The windows, or more accurately, the
skylights, angled sixty degrees away from the roof, bathing the huge
studio with sunshine. There were a dozen pieces of hewn furniture, in
varying stages of completion, scattered around the room. She seemed
to specialize in hardwood kitchen and bath cabinets.

Goldberg walked toward a thickly upholstered but
gut-sprung armchair that was obscured by a nearly finished floor
cabinet that must have weighed fifty pounds. She bent over and
hoisted the cabinet to chest level.

"Can I give you a hand with that?"

"I can manage." She moved it off to the
side without apparent effort and then flopped into the chair. Pushing
forty if not past it, she was wearing a plaid shirt with the sleeves
unbuttoned and old army camouflage pants. Both were as covered with
sawdust as the floor around her. Her hair was short, parted in the
center and combed to the sides like an 1890s judge. She said,
"Homicide or Narcotics?"

"Neither. My name’s John Cuddy. I’m the guy
the cops thought was the killer."

Tugging on an earlobe with her left hand, Goldberg
slid her hand down the chair’s fanny cushion. She came up with a
survivalist knife about a foot long.

"You have another gun, I’m dead. You don’t,
you are."

I lowered my rump onto the third rung of a ladder
beyond threatening range. "Nice trick, but if you think
somebody’s going to try to take you, it’s usually better not to
be caught sitting down."

"What do you want?"

"Somebody set me up for the killing. Mugged me
beforehand, took my gun and used it. I want to find out who and why."

"The cops still think it was you?"

"Reasonable people seem to differ on that."

She laughed, but the knife didn’t waver. "Like
I told you on the phone, I already talked to the cops. Both Homicide
and a black guy from Narcotics. They didn’t seem to think I knew
anything that mattered."

"Mind answering a few questions for me anyway?"

She brought the knife down to her lap. "Go
ahead," without enthusiasm.

"I already talked with a man called Nino. His
real name is—"

"I know who he is."

"He’s arranging for me to talk with some of
Teri’s . . ." I stopped.

"What’s the matter, you can’t say the words?
I can. Some of her ‘hooker friends,' you mean."

"It’s not that. I just realized. All the
police and Nino ever told me was her street name. I never heard them
use her real name."

Goldberg bit her lower lip. She looked down at the
knife and said, "They never bothered to. Not even the cops when
they were talking with me. Always just ‘the Angel,' like she was
some kind of car model you referred to like that."

I waited. She finally looked up and said quietly, "It
was Teri, actually. Or Theresa. Theresa Papangelis. That’s where
she got the Angel part from."

"Tomorrow I’ll be seeing some of the other
women she knew through Nino. Can you tell me something about her they
won’t?"

"I don’t know. We met at . . . this bar for
women. Meeting is easier now than when I was younger. Back in high
school my mother was always pointing me toward guys, especially the
smart ones. But it’s kind of hard to care about the president of
the biology club when you have your eye on the captain of the
cheerleaders, you know?"

"How long ago did you meet her?"

"About a year. When Teri walked in that night,
she was spectacular. Every head in the place turned to watch her. She
came right over to me and sat down and said, ‘You have kind eyes.'
Just like that. We came home here, and I’d see her maybe every two
weeks or so."

She stopped, so I said, "Did she talk much about
her life?"

"No. Not if you mean ‘the life.' I didn’t
even know . . . No, that’s not fair. She didn’t tell me for a
month or so, but I guessed it from her clothes and the fact she would
come to see me but I couldn’t come to see her. At first, I thought
maybe she was married, but then she finally told me, and I wasn’t
surprised?