The Perfect Ghost (14 page)

TB:
But you remember the Gregory-Malcolm split.

MB:
Sure I do. I don’t have to look that one up. That’s the one that got away. Shoulda put my name out there in lights, that case. I mean, I thought I was the cat’s meow, the big-time go-to guy, figured I’d move to L.A., make millions with celebrities for clients, and here I sit on my duff a couple hundred years later. You probably had trouble finding me.

TB:
You wound up settling.

MB:
You do what your client tells you. You can counsel him about what’s in his best interest, but in the end you do what he wants.

TB:
The preliminary hearings, the depositions, they seem to go in a very different direction than the final disposition.

MB:
Yeah, you might say so.

TB:
Garrett Malcolm called the shots?

MB:
I was ready, more than ready, I was amped, gonna fight tooth and nail, hungry and mean as a cougar. Garrett wanted the girl with him, he wanted her with her grandparents, he wanted her with that theater group so she could grow up the same way he did, and I thought we had a damn good chance for full custody, given always the hazards of a trial, the decision of the judge. It’s always a crapshoot, but things had gotten better for fathers in Massachusetts, and the two of them, their lifestyles would be a giant factor. He, for all the craziness, had a solid home base. Claire Gregory was all over the damn map. Her house was a hotel room in Rome one day, a friend’s mansion in Brentwood the next. She might be on location for this film or that film. Malcolm offered comparative stability.

TB:
Sounds promising.

MB:
It was. I coulda won that baby.

TB:
And?

MB:
You’re not taping this, right? And then one day he walks in and says it’s all off, give Claire whatever the hell she wants.

TB:
And what did you think?

MB:
Strictly off the record? I thought she got the goods on him.

TB:
The goods?

MB:
You know. I figure she’s got photos of him screwing other women or men or monkeys, whatever. Shooting dope, doing drugs, doing something that would not only ruin his career but land him in the clink.

TB:
You don’t think he just changed his mind, decided a girl’s place was with her mother?

MB:
He swung a hundred and eighty degrees overnight, like somebody was holding a gun to his head. I’ve seen that kinda thing before, and I waited for the explosion. I even started reading the Hollywood gossip rags because that kinda stuff always leaks.

TB:
But in this case, it didn’t?

MB:
Look, that’s enough. I’m an old fart who talks too much. I see any of this in print, I’ll deny you were here. My wife’ll back me up, too. Believe me, she will, ’cause she’s my fourth wife and she really wants to be the last one.

CHAPTER

twenty-one

What the hell, Teddy?

None of my hopes for this nerve-wrenching journey were bearing fruit. I’d anticipated Brooklyn Pierce’s tenor, trained and supple, as the triumphant sound track for my return to the Cape, but this taped growl was slurred and halting. It wasn’t Pierce, and worse, it was unfamiliar. I vaguely recollected the name Barrington; no doubt I’d noted at some moment in time that a Mark Barrington had served as Malcolm’s divorce attorney, but I’d never scheduled an interview with the man.

Maybe you’d approached him on other business—say, to instigate divorce proceedings against Caroline—and taped him on impulse, the way you must have taped Pierce. But you’d always claimed divorce was out of the question: Caroline would never divorce you. I listened long after the canned voices died, then punched rewind and listened again. Every one of our tapes was numbered. Each tape started with the same identifying information. I already had a tape marked 048 in my registry, and this wasn’t it. My 048 was dated like all the other tapes. This one wasn’t. And that early clicking noise, that sharp snap where you evidently shut off the machine and descended to the briefcase trick, the one where the interviewer hides a second recorder, a gambit you railed against in class? What in hell were you thinking, Teddy? What were you planning?

I couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea of another new tape any more than I couldn’t fathom the figure on that unsigned check: one hundred eighty thousand dollars. Given, it wasn’t the millions scribbled on that notepad, but it wasn’t lira, either. A hundred and eighty thousand dollars.

Route 2 to Storrow Drive on autopilot. I zipped past the BU exit with a brief and yearning glance in the direction of Bay State Road, kept my foot pressed hard on the accelerator. Approaching Leverett Circle, traffic slowed as red cones blocked access to two lanes. I inched toward the rotary and stopped at the yellow light, provoking the enraged driver behind me to issue three long blasts on his horn.

An unauthorized biographer might have pursued Malcolm’s divorce attorney, might even have paid him for his tittle-tattle. But there was no chance anything like that would end up in our book. In my book.

The old Southeast Expressway used to be a dreaded stretch of elevated road that divided downtown Boston from the North End, depriving both neighborhoods of sunlight and asphyxiating them with exhaust. Now sunken underground, cemented beneath the Rose Kennedy Greenway, it’s even worse, a tomblike marble-run where frantic drivers cope with inadequate signage, desperate to merge or exit before getting shunted to the wrong destination. Staying tucked in the right-hand lane was not an option unless I craved a forced detour into East Boston.

I knew how you worked, Teddy. You were methodical, not impulsive. Orderly. Focused.

By the time I got as far as Braintree I was sweating and wishing I’d stuck to Route 128, the long way around. The shorter option should have taken less time, but traffic was stop and go, one lane knocked out by construction, another jammed with trucks. I consulted my watch and edged into the fast lane. Traffic loosened and I drove like a woman pursued by banshees, shoulder muscles tightening by the quarter mile.

So much could go wrong at high speed, so quickly and irrevocably. The rental had no dashboard gauges, just a single light marked “engine,” an idiot light that might or might not flash prior to disaster. Oil could leak, steering belts fray. Each engine part was vulnerable. Moving parts wear on each other, abrade each other. You have to oil them, coddle them, watch over them. And even if you trusted the engine, there were errant drivers, brake-riders who veered from lane to lane, seeking a momentary rush, a brief advantage, and always, always, humans too stupid and selfish to control their alcohol intake before venturing onto the highways.

A cloud of birds launched itself from an overpass and swooped into vee formation, heading north. Sparrows, perhaps, common grayish-brown birds, but they, too, filled me with dread. Weeks ago, thousands of red-winged blackbirds had fallen from the skies over Arkansas, plummeting onto houses and roadways. Grackles and starlings, struck by lightning in Louisiana, rained down on a small bayou town. Even if the mechanical parts of the engine kept turning, even if no driver intent on mayhem strayed into my lane, falling birds could crack my windshield like an eggshell. I glanced nervously at the clock, flicked the turn signal, and evacuated the high-speed lane.

The Sagamore Bridge was visible in the rearview mirror when my cell rang the first time. It’s not yet illegal to answer a cell phone while driving in Massachusetts, but I wasn’t tempted because steering took all my effort and concentration. The third time the phone rang I exited Route 6 and made three aimless right turns onto progressively less crowded roads till I was able to pull over on a residential lane.

You have three missed phone calls. You have one voice mail.

The three numbers were identical. I felt a twist in my gut as I pressed keys and entered my password. When Darren Kalver informed me that my three o’clock meeting with Garrett Malcolm would need to be rescheduled, I gulped a deep shuddering breath and thought,
I could have spent another night at the apartment; I could have slept in my own bed.

Anger, at Caroline, construction delays, carelessly weaving drivers, and now Kalver swelled like a cancerous growth in my throat. I plunged my hand into my purse, seeking Xanax, then withdrew it as though I’d been stung by a scorpion. I couldn’t drive drugged. Did Malcolm know Kalver had canceled? Of course he knew; Malcolm would have ordered Kalver’s action. Postponed, not canceled. Postponed. I grabbed at that straw. Rescheduled, not canceled.

I blamed Kalver.
You don’t have time for her. She’s unimportant. She’s nobody. Let’s put her off. Let’s cancel her.
I crossed my arms over the steering wheel, lowered my head till it rested in their cradle, and closed my eyes. All the rush and fury, all the miles yet to drive before I got to Eastham, all the useless miles to Boston and back again.

The tap, tap, tap on the window made me start. Tap, tap, tap, like Melody’s broom hitting the ceiling, smacking the floor. Disoriented, I checked my surroundings as I lowered the window. Was I in Lexington? The houses were too small. Had I slept?

“You all right?” The khaki-clad policeman stood between sun and shadow, so I had to squint to make out the features beneath the bill of his cap. I peeked at the rearview mirror. His pale gray cruiser, blue lights flashing, crowded my rear fender.

“I’m fine,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I thought you might be lost or—”

“Yes.” I leaped at his suggestion.

“Are you looking for someplace? Someone?”

The name flashed into my mind as though it were written in flaring neon across the windshield. At first I wasn’t sure I’d spoken it out loud.

“Detective Snow?” the policeman said. “Russell Snow, up in Dennis?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m supposed to go see him.”

“You still got maybe twenty minutes’ drive,” he said. “Take Exit Nine off of Route Six. You know how to find Carrier Street?”

“No.”

“Wait a minute.”

The chill from the open window made me shudder, or maybe it was the release of tension when he no longer blocked the window. I was certain he was typing my license plate number into a laptop, making sure I wasn’t piloting a stolen vehicle or fleeing a liquor store stickup. I felt the wild desire to escape, race off, even though I’d rented the car legally. I sat statue-like till he returned and unfolded a large-scale map. He was patience itself explaining the route, asking if I wanted him to write down the details.

“It’s okay. I’ll find it.”

“You’re sure there’s nothing else I can do? You want me to call Detective Snow, let him know you’re on the way?”

“Please, I’m fine. I might stop and have lunch or something.”

“Good idea.”

I thanked him, smiling, trying to radiate confidence and competence until the cruiser pulled out and drove away. I waited till it vanished, making a right turn at a stop sign. I knew I needed to move, drive. The officer might take another right, circle the block, come up behind me again.

I breathed deeply, in through the nose, out through the mouth. It was all right; nothing terrible had happened. The tightly bunched afternoon had unexpectedly opened like a late-blooming rose. I had free time. I would do it, drive to Dennis Port, find Detective Russell Snow, speak to the man at a time of my own choosing. He’d hand over Brooklyn Pierce’s tape, safe and secure in a sealed brown envelope.

He wanted to talk to me; I wanted to talk to him. Feigning confidence made me feel confident. I could handle it.

CHAPTER

twenty-two

My idea of a police department was based on the movies. Malcolm’s own
Red Shot
provided an iconic image, an urban ghetto outpost, a grim structure that might have been a run-down elementary school or an abandoned factory, with a tattered flag sagging on a rusted pole over a row of barred windows.

The Dennis Port Police Department was a cheerful building that could have doubled as an old-time general store, with a broad front porch, wooden railings, and shutters that framed windows that looked like they ought to be filled with merchandise. Inside, the space was awkwardly partitioned into small alcoves and offices, but the old rafters still gave a sense of what it used to be, a massive single room where people came to buy and share necessities, corn and grain and gossip. The creaking floorboards announced my arrival to a plump man at the front desk, who lifted a phone, barked a few short interrogatory sentences, and buzzed me through a locking gate with the admonition to enter the third door on the left.

The door was wide open, the interior small. The man behind the metal desk rose as I came in, but not without difficulty, and I read illness in his pinched features, gray skin, and labored movement. He had deep-set, light-colored eyes, a sharp nose, and a thin mouth balanced in a narrow, bony face. His dark hair was disheveled, as though he’d just run his hands through it, and lightly streaked with gray. He looked in his late forties, but he might have been younger. His blue shirt and wrinkled gray trousers probably fit better when he weighed an additional twenty pounds.