Coyote (11 page)

Bad move on her part. It made me jump higher. Spike harder. I killed a ball right down the line, pretty as a pro shot, and I could hear her hiss like a kettle ready to steam.

The second game went 15–12, far from a rout. Kristy gave us a pep talk cum warning to finish them off in the third game. If any of their other players woke up, we could be in trouble. B.C. was playing a hell of a game, and there was further speculation about the Olympic scout. Joy thought she might have seen him on TV. Didn't he play for the Patriots?

We had the third game won when it happened, and I'm not saying B.C. did it on purpose. But she did have that unbelievable control, and I wouldn't have put it past her, not the way she was yelling and fuming and swearing. The referee glanced over from time to time, and I think he should have called an unsportsmanlike on her, but nobody asked me.

Anyway, we needed two more points for the match. Kristy was serving on a hot streak, five points in, aiming 'em at the little fireplug who surprised everybody by setting one up. B.C. came roaring over to smash it. I countered to block her and launched myself at the same time she took off. She saw me rise to meet her, rearranged herself to fire off to my right, to miss my block entirely. Joy, next to me, moved late, and the ball would have sailed by her for the kill.

Instead of taking the easy shot, getting the side-out and the ball, B.C. switched in midair. I swear I could see her eyes flicker when she decided to do it. She must have sensed that I'd relaxed, seeing that the ball was going to be Joy's to hit or miss, not mine. She didn't aim for air; she aimed for me.

On pure reflex I deflected the ball with my left hand, but it still hit my face with hardly any of its momentum gone. Then I was on the floor, crouched on knee pads and elbows, blood pooling in front of me. There was a lot of it, and it seemed like it must have come from somebody else. For a moment I flashed on the scene in the Fens and almost lost my breakfast.

Somebody thrust a towel at me and I held it to my face. It came away bright crimson.

Shit, I thought. Not my damn nose. Not again.

Kristy was yelling at the referee and at B.C. The ref was trying to get everybody back in the game.

One of the differences between men's and women's teams is how they react to injury. You watch a football game, a hockey game, and some guy gets injured, flat on his back, down for the count. The other guys on the team don't even go over to ask if he's alive. The coach comes out, the trainer, then the ambulance crew with the stretcher. With as little fuss as possible, the guy is carted off, a replacement comes in, and play resumes.

With us, if somebody takes a bad fall, stays on the parquet too long, we stop. We all rush over and offer assistance, a kind word, a hand up. A wet towel. The game stops dead until we're sure she's okay.

I prefer it. Maybe that's why you don't see many women's team sports on the tube. Takes up too much time, all that helping the wounded.

I couldn't feel the bridge of my nose. I badly wanted a mirror. The thought of the locker-room mirrors did nothing for me. If I bent down far enough to look in one, I was sure I'd get nauseated.

Two people, I think it was Edna on one side and Kristy on the other, helped me over to the bench. I sat and bloodied the towel some more. As soon as my eyes started focusing, I assured my teammates I was okay. Kristy looked at the relative size of my pupils, then asked me the key questions: What's your name? Where are you? I must have answered correctly because she motioned to our best bench-warmer.

“We won't need you for these last two points,” she said. “Hit the locker room. Lie down. We'll be there in a minute.”

“Yeah,” I said.

As soon as the game started up again, I hauled myself to my feet. I remembered seeing a ladies' room right outside the double gym doors, one that might have a mirror in an accessible position.

It's not that I'm vain, but my nose has had its troubles. I broke it for the first time when I was six years old. My next-door neighbor had done the honors, wielding a wooden toy hammer. I busted it again when I was a cop. And cab driving did it the third time. I don't have a huge nose or anything, but the bridge has a rather distinctive bump. I've gotten fond of that bump.

I touched it as I walked. If it was broken, it wasn't a bad break. My nose wasn't squashed to one side or anything. My cheekbone hurt.

The ladies' room was where I remembered it, across from a men's room with a drinking fountain in between. The hunk was standing by the fountain holding a wet towel. He walked over and held it out to me.

“You ought to get cold water on that, Ms. Carlyle,” he said. “Ice cubes would be better.”

His eyes were blue.

I took the sopping towel and held it to my face. Water dripped down the front of my already sweat-soaked top. I must have been a little hazy, because I was wondering why an Olympic scout would know my name.

His voice was baritone. Accent from the South. Close up he looked even better than from afar.

I mumbled my thanks and stumbled into the bathroom. I no longer felt nauseated. From practice, I knew what to do next. I filled the sink with cold water, took a deep breath, pleased that my nose still functioned, and plunged my whole head into the sink.

The water was pink when I came up for air. I let the pink water drain and started again. This time I dared to glance in the mirror.

Not bad. I'd envisioned a hunk of raw meat, and what I saw still had the definite contours of my nose. I tried a profile view, ran my fingers carefully along the bridge. I didn't think the damn thing was even busted. I put my nose and face back in the sink. The water changed color less.

The hunk was waiting when I emerged, damp but feeling a hell of a lot better. I headed to the gym, thinking I might be able to play if we'd lost the third game, thinking I'd like a chance to spike a ball into that damned B.C. dropout.

“Ms. Carlyle, could we talk awhile?”

“Huh?” I said.

“About Manuela Estefan?”

I stopped dead. “Who are you?”

“INS.”

Well, damn, I thought, who woulda guessed?

16

“Where'd you go? You see that last point?” Edna asked breathlessly as soon as I walked into the locker room.

Nobody needed to tell me we'd won. A winning locker room feels different from a losing one. Besides, the suburban team would have needed hours to pull back from a 2–1 deficit.

“Who's the hunk?” This from Joy. I wondered how she'd been able to see through closed doors. Probably noticed both of us disappear from the gym at the same time. The rest was pure guesswork.

I grinned at her, assured them all that I was feeling better, showered, and dressed quickly. The hunk was waiting when I came out. Joy and Edna passed while I was talking to him and gave me the eye.

“You carrying some ID?” I asked him. He yanked a brown folder like Jamieson's out of his hip pocket. It said I was speaking to Special Agent Harrison Clinton.

“Harry will do,” he said with a smile that warmed up his eyes.

“You have a car, Harry?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Mind driving me home?”

He stared at my nose. The bleeding had stopped, but I was carrying a damp towel, pressing it against my nose and cheek except when conversation required removing it. Might as well keep the swelling down.

“How about to a hospital?” he suggested.

“Home,” I said firmly. I wanted to know if he knew where I lived. I wanted to see if he drove a white Aries. Also, I just plain wanted to get home. I had a headache coming on that was going to be spectacular. I could feel it rumbling behind my eyes like far-off thunder on a summer afternoon.

He drove a boxy sedan, but it wasn't an Aries. I bet it was a rental or an agency job. He'd parked it in an alley behind the Y, ignoring the no-parking signs.

“You sure you don't want to make a stop at a doctor's?” he inquired when I'd belted myself into the passenger seat.

I asked him bluntly if he'd been following me around in a white Aries. It may have been rude, but his solicitousness was starting to get on my nerves.

“Not me,” he said quickly.

“What about your buddy Jamieson?”

He smiled when I said the name, the corners of his eyes crinkling. He was at least my age. His skin had a weathered look you don't find much in Boston. “I'm not saying he did, but old Walter never could tail worth a damn.”

“Whereas if you'd been following me, I wouldn't have caught on?” I said, raising an eyebrow skeptically.

“Well, I'm not bragging …” He had an easy grin over a mouthful of nicely spaced, slightly yellowed teeth. Maybe a former smoker, like me. The teeth saved him from looking like a male model. I mean, who wants perfection?

I locked my door and settled back, leaning to my right so I could watch him drive. Good cop, bad cop, was probably the name of this game. Jamieson had been nasty for no particular reason, and now Clinton had been sent to charm the details out of me. The hell with it, let him try. My head pounded faintly. I put the towel to my nose and leaned back against the headrest.

He eased the car out onto Huntington Avenue. The afternoon traffic was light.

“I wanted to tell you we appreciate your cooperation on this case,” he said. “You didn't have to come forward.”

I didn't respond. He took a left onto Mass. Ave., intimidating a battered pickup truck. He drove well, big hands easy on the wheel.

“Uh, I was wondering,” he said after working his way through the traffic lights between Symphony Hall and the Mother Church, “do you have any idea why the Estefan woman came to you in the first place?” He'd decided to go straight up Mass. Ave. into Cambridge. I would have gone through the Fenway, taken Park Drive to Memorial Drive. Faster.

“Nope,” I offered from behind my towel mask. “No idea.”

“Have you handled any other cases for immigrants? It doesn't have to be in the recent past. Go back ten years if you have to.”

He turned and saw my smile and looked embarrassed. “I don't suppose you could go back ten years as a private investigator, could you?”

“Ten years ago I was a cop,” I said. A rookie, but I didn't tell him that.

“Hard to believe,” he said with a flirtatious grin. I sat back and waited for the rest of the show.

“Ten years ago,” he said after beating out a green Chevette at a traffic light. “That's about when I started.”

I raised my eyebrow again. It's something I work on from time to time.

“Yep,” he said, “I guess I thought I'd be out welcoming Russian defectors. Big-time undercover stuff. Berlin. Intrigue.”

“You into intrigue?” I asked. “That how you knew where to find me today?”

“Wasn't too hard,” he said smugly. “Just flashed my ID at that little gal lives at your place, the one with the, uh, weird hair.” I knew what he'd been about to say before he substituted the line about the hair. Roz has other attributes that men, in particular, seem to notice.

“So immigration hasn't lived up to expectations?” I said, leading him on. As long as he talked, I didn't have to.

He stopped at a traffic light and swiveled to face me. “I'm not into chasing some poor OTM wants to come in here and earn food money doing the kind of shitwork native-born Americans won't touch. I want you to know that.”

“OTM?” I said. It sounded familiar, but I thought I might be reacting to ATM, automated teller machines.

“Other Than Mexican,” he said. “It's a category we use.”

“Gotta have labels,” I said dryly.

“It's for Latins only. Like, you wouldn't be an OTM.” He flashed the grin at me again. He was good. It may have been the headache, but I almost felt I could trust him, that I could pour out my worries.

“Okay,” I said, catching myself, “why does INS give a damn what I'm doing? Why do you care about any Manuela Estefan? There's a green card on her, right? She's legal.”

He zipped past a slow Buick. “You think that's all we do, right? Round 'em up and head 'em the hell back to the border?”

“Yeah,” I said, “that's what I hear you do.”

“Well,” he said, “that ain't all there is.”

I remembered what Marian Rutledge, the Cambridge Legal Collective lawyer, had told me. “I hear you guys run detention camps on the Texas border. I hear a lot that makes me wonder why somebody who doesn't like chasing Third World poor people out of the country wouldn't maybe find other work,” I said.

That shut down conversation for a while. We made it over the Harvard Bridge without causing its collapse.

“What we've got,” he said in a sorrowful tone, “is one hell of a public-relations problem. And somehow I don't think Congress is gonna fund us an ad campaign.”

I smiled in spite of myself. He played hurt so well. It could have been the twang. I wondered if my outburst was due to the fact that I felt attracted to the guy. Automatic self-preservation. I have a history of liking the wrong guys. When I feel the old chemistry churn, I know I've met either a much-married man or a guy who'll mess up my head. So I get argumentative right off.

He wasn't wearing a wedding band.

There was road construction in Central Square. Every bump jarred my head.

“Sure you're okay?” he said.

Behind us, somebody blared his horn.

“Fine,” I said through gritted teeth.

I had the towel up to my face. He reached over and pulled a few strands of my hair free of the cloth. His hand brushed my cheek and the cynical part of me wondered if this was part of the good-cop routine. The rest of me felt the tingle.

He didn't ask for directions to the house. He didn't need them. When he pulled up in the driveway, I had my hand on the door handle, my goodbye in my mouth, but he leaned over and put a restraining hand on my arm.