The Snake Tattoo (2 page)

Love ya
,

Paolina

“She's okay,” I said to Mooney. “But I don't know when she'll be back.”

Marta, Paolina's crazy Colombian mother, had called me five weeks ago. Her father was sick in Bogotá and she needed to see him before he died. And she had to take Paolina, her oldest, because Popi would remember Paolina. I didn't get more detail because Marta doesn't speak much English and my Spanish is poor.

I've spent a lot of time replaying that conversation. As far as I know, Marta and her family don't get along. She hasn't spoken to or about them for as long as I've known her. Maybe money was involved, an inheritance. That would account for Marta's insistence on bringing Paolina. One look at that kid and I'd sign my millions over to her, if I had them. I'm prejudiced, I admit.

Paolina exacted two promises before she left. One: that I'd continue to drill the parakeet in Spanish. Paolina and I have an ongoing argument about the bird. She belonged to my late Aunt Bea, who named her Fluffy in some lapse of creative spirit. When I inherited house and bird, I renamed the budgie immediately. She is now Red Emma, after the infamous anarchist of the twenties. Emma Goldman was one of my mom's heroes, one of mine, too. Paolina doesn't like the name because, as she rightly points out, Red Emma is not red, but green. So Paolina calls her Esmeralda.

The budgie, less than clever on its best days, has stopped speaking entirely in its confusion.

The other promise was that I wouldn't get another little sister while she was gone. The thought never entered my head. Paolina's my little sister no matter where she is.

“She'll be back,” Mooney said softly.

“Hey, sorry,” I said.

“I think I'd better tell you now.”

While I'd been dreaming of Paolina, he must have tossed some kind of mental coin. It had teetered on its edge, then come down in my favor. He replaced Paolina's photo on the coffee table, strolled back, and sat down.

I waited.

“It was Saturday night,” he began, shifting into the voice he used for reading reports and giving orders. “I stopped off for a drink on the way home. At the Blue Note.”

He glanced at me, but I kept my face carefully blank. The Note is a Combat Zone bar, a fleabag pickup joint where hookers congregate.

Not that he owed me any explanation. Mooney and I have never been an item. We've gotten damn close, but I always back off. I've been married, I've played the field, and I consider myself retired from the man-woman business. To tell you the truth, I can't figure it out at all.

“I had a drink,” Mooney continued. “A draft beer, and I ordered another. This woman—well, she came on to me. I wasn't on duty or anything. I hadn't seen her around. I figure she's new talent. Young. Runaway. Vietnamese, so I'm trying to remember words and phrases I picked up over there, but I can't remember much. Hell, who wants to remember? She didn't push it, didn't make any hard offers. The comeon was like a dating bar or something. If she'd gone any further, I would have had to identify myself, but I don't think I'd have busted her. I'd have warned her not to cozy up to men who wear shiny black lace-up shoes.”

I grinned at his description of cop footwear, but I didn't say anything because Mooney seemed to be giving his report to the mantel clock. I chewed softly, not wanting to remind him I was in the room.

“I was talking with her,” he went on, “just talking, and some guy grabs me by the shoulder and tosses me halfway across the room. When I got myself sorted out, the next thing I know the guy is yelling at the woman, and I figure it's her pimp, and he's made me for a cop, and he's mad at her. I should have realized if he'd known I was cop, he wouldn't have yanked me off her like that.…”

He reached over and took a slice of pizza, carefully removing the anchovies and resettling them on an adjacent piece. I nodded to show it was okay. Double anchovies would be fine with me, and there was plenty of pizza for both of us. For two minutes, chewing was the loudest sound in the room.

“He starts shaking the girl around,” Mooney said. “Not hitting, but threatening her. So I get in the middle and he pulls a blade. I identify myself as a cop. I mean, I definitely remember saying, in the middle of all this crap, ‘Boston Police, put down your weapon,' and feeling like a total jerk. He doesn't act like he hears me. I lose any Vietnamese I ever had. I draw my gun, but no way I'm gonna shoot. Too tight, other people around. The bastard comes at me. We move around a lot, knock some glasses off the bar. People are hollering and racing around, but all I can focus on is that damn hand and that knife. He gets in close, but he's not a good fighter. Still, he keeps coming. He misses me by a mile and I smack him with the gun butt. He goes down. I cuff him and read Miranda. And the rest goes by the book.”

“Sounds okay,” I ventured after a long pause. I wondered if Mooney hadn't come to me earlier because it was about picking up a woman. “Sounds like a good bust.”

Mooney made a sound that should have been a laugh but there wasn't any humor in it. “The guy's skull cracked. He's in New England Medical Center and he's in bad shape. He's a goddamn leader of the Dorchester Vietnamese community. The woman, the girl I thought was the runaway hooker, that's his wife. She swears he didn't have a blade. Nobody saw a knife except me, and there wasn't one on him when they took him to the hospital, and nobody found one in the bar. They say he hardly speaks English. And nobody in the bar saw a freaking thing. Not the bartender, not the drunks. They're calling it excessive brutality right now, but it could get worse if he …”

“Dies?” I said, when Mooney's voice trailed off.

“Yeah,” he said. “Dies.”

I eased out of my chair, went to the kitchen, and popped the tops off two cans: one beer, one Pepsi. I put the beer on the desk. Mooney took a long drink.

“You know, Carlotta,” he said, “I've run through this thing in my mind so often, sometimes I think I must be going nuts. I go over it and over it and it never seems to change, but then when BPS asks me about it, I feel like I'm on the other side of a mirror or something, or I'm speaking another language.”

BPS is the Bureau of Professional Standards. Also known as Internal Affairs.

“I'm sorry,” I said, because I didn't know what else to say.

“I keep thinking about the newspapers, Carlotta. I mean, with all the troubles the department's been having lately, they'll rip my hide. It won't be my case in particular. Hell, I'll get to represent all the rotten cops in this rotten city. Everybody on the goddamn city council will have an opinion on this. The mayor. Every goddamn candidate for public office. I'll be a racist and a fascist and God knows what the hell else.”

He was right. It was not a great time for a cop to draw attention to himself. The Boston Police are no better and no worse than any others, but lately the newspapers have been unfolding scandal after scandal. First came the revelation that cops pulled the multimillion-dollar Medford Trust bank robbery. Then came the assorted confessions of said cops, men who seemed incapable of shutting up once granted immunity. Among other daring deeds, they'd stolen copies of police civil service exams. They'd broken into headquarters, elevated grades for their buddies and lowered them for guys they didn't like. The press called it “Examscam.” Now there were rumors that cops were taking payoffs to “protect” bars, and worse, leaving them unprotected. The newshounds hadn't come up with a catchy slogan for it yet, but something with “gate” or “scam” in it was bound to surface soon.

“So,” Mooney said, blowing out a deep breath, “I was hoping you'd know this witness. She must have seen the whole thing. Bleached-blonde. Hooker. Good shape, but not a young chickie. What I remember most is she had a tattoo, a snake. It was twisting up her leg, starting at the ankle, and she was wearing a short leather skirt.”

“Shouldn't be too hard to find,” I said. “A snake tattoo.”

“That's what I thought. I was sure Vice would nail her right off, or at least have her in the files. They've got rosebuds, hearts, dirty words, and butterflies, but no snakes. And nobody seems to know her. And now I'm out of it. I can't even check what's going on, who's looking for her. I'm completely out.”

I said, “Notice anybody else?”

“She's the one I remember most. The barkeep was a sandy-haired guy with a big gut. There weren't a whole lot of others. You know bar people. The minute they see a cop, they melt into the woodwork.”

There was a loud bang from upstairs. It was a sound to which I was growing accustomed.

“Roz doing karate?” Mooney asked. This was not a smartass remark. Roz, my tenant, is a devotee of the martial arts, not to mention the martial arts instructor.

“Plumbers,” I said as the banging continued.

“Trouble?”

“Remodeling the bathroom.”

“Business must be good.”

I let him think that. There was more rumbling and thudding from above. It sounded like God bowling.

“So what about it?” he said.

“You need her, I'll find her, Mooney.”

“Okay, then,” he said, managing to sound both apprehensive and relieved. He leaned to one side to slip his wallet out of his hip pocket. “A hundred do for a retainer?”

“On the house,” I said.

“You take a check?”

“Read my lips, Mooney. On the house.”

“I'm not a charity case.”

“I'm not offering handouts. Favor for favor, like always.”

“That was when you were a cop.”

“Same thing.”

“This is too big for a favor,” he said.

“Want to bet on it?” I said. Betting is an old tradition with Mooney and me. Another thing we have in common: We both hate to lose. “When's the hearing?”

“The twenty-sixth. Two weeks from today.”

“If I find her before your cop buddies do—and before the hearing—you pay. If I don't find her, or I don't find her first, it's a freebie.”

“Look, Carlotta, I have every confidence in the force—”

“Sure you do,” I said.

“No bet,” he said. “I pay, whether you find her or not.”

Mooney doesn't earn big bucks. And his mom gets a pittance from Social Security.

“Look,” I said, “if you thought the cops were going to find her first, you wouldn't be here, right?”

The pipes rumbled threateningly.

“Right,” he said gloomily. “Like I said, I thought Vice would nab her in twenty-four hours, but now—”

“So trust your hunches, Moon. It's what makes you a good cop.”

He almost smiled. I guess nobody'd called him a good cop for a while.

“Well, if we're talking about a bet here,” he said with more spirit, “then let's raise the ante. If you find her first, I pay whatever your private cops extort these days. But if you don't find her first—and I'm not in jail—you, uh, go out with me. A real date, not an ice cream cone.”

When I was a cop, Mooney and I worked together so well I wouldn't even consider dating him. Now that I'm private, no longer a link in his chain of command, he asks me out a lot. And I always refuse. Somewhere along the line I decide he was too good a friend to risk on romance.

Or maybe I just hear my mother's voice. “Never get involved with a cop,” was another of her favorite sayings. She married one—my dad—so she knew what she was talking about.

“How about you pay me in ice cream cones?” I said.

“Seriously,” he said. “A date.”

“Let's keep this a commercial transaction, okay?” I said.

“Then no bet. I pay you for your time.”

“Then I don't take the damn case.”

“Come on, Carlotta. What have you got to lose?”

“Not my virginity, Moon. How'd your mom feel about that?”

“I'll ask her first thing when I get home, Carlotta.”

“Look, Mooney.” I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. According to Mooney, his mom has no sense of humor, period. “Let me do this my way. I don't need your money up front. I'm not starving. I'm doing okay. I've got a roof over my head, a paying tenant.”

Even free plumbing help. I didn't mention that because it didn't feel like an advantage.

“Face it,” Mooney said, “you're not making a living, Carlotta. You drive that dumb cab nights. It's dangerous.”

“I like driving that dumb cab.”

Mooney is stubborn and I'm stubborner. We went at it for a while and finally left the terms of the agreement undecided. He insisted on signing one of my standard client forms, and I let him.

I figured I could always rip it up.

CHAPTER 2

If it hadn't been for Twin Brothers Plumbing Company, I'd have tucked myself into bed soon after Mooney left. As it happened, two hours later, I found myself slouched in the driver's seat of a Green & White cab, peering down a Combat Zone alley, trying not to freeze to death. Just yesterday Boston had rewarded the faithful with a whopping April snowstorm that was making the natives reconsider California. Not me. I'd rather shovel out the daffodils than put up with crystal-gazing neighbors and the odd earthquake or two.

Spring flowers did not brighten up my alleyway. I was parked near its mouth, close to a fire hydrant. The narrow roadbed was decorated with smashed wine bottles, greasy hamburger wrappings, and piles of slushy snow. I hugged my arms and wished for a warmer coat while I scanned the rickety staircase-cum-fire-escape of a three-story yellow brick flophouse. Back when I was a cop assigned to the Zone, a pimp named Renney housed his stable there. One of his fillies was Janine. And I needed to find her, to check if my hunch was right.

I shifted my rear end. Gloria, the formidable dispatcher at G&W, didn't hand out the comfy new cabs with the bucket seats to last-minute jockeys. She'd given me the best hack available on short notice at 10:37
P.M.
I was doing Bostonians a favor by taking it out of circulation for a few hours.