Coyote (16 page)

“Bureaucracy, pure and complex, far as I can tell. Other than the background on Estefan, they've got nothing.”

“You know what kind of car Jamieson drives?”

“No.” He took a tentative sip of his tea and set it down quickly. Too hot. “Why?”

I shrugged. “I don't like him.”

“And usually you like everybody you meet on a case?”

“Sure,” I said with a straight face. “You know me. Easy to get along with.”

He opened his mouth, closed it, picked up his teacup, and tried again. He was grinning at me with his eyes.

The appetizers arrived, and we dug in like starving orphans. The wonton broth made my eyes water.

Mooney said, “Jamieson is the fastest paper-pusher I've ever met. He's filed so many goddamn interagency request forms, I could use a full-time liaison just to keep up with him. I don't have time for that crap, and I figure if he files the forms, he should at least have the decency to wait for us to file the responses instead of haunting my office. I don't like him much either. And now that the press has the story, they're breathing down my neck, yapping about how we should have called it a serial killing when we had the one body, or maybe before any corpses showed up, and the politicians want to get into the act and show how committed they are to the Hispanic community and—”

He stopped, shook his head like a wet dog, forked a bite of spring roll, and made a half-hearted stab at a grin. Then he said, “And how are you?”

I smiled ruefully, recognizing his attempt to turn the working motor off. “Okay. I don't think I've stopped running since seven this morning, and I can't remember the last time I sat down and ate a meal. Today lasted about two weeks.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.” He reached over and touched his fingertips to my cheek. “And tell me about this.”

“Volleyball, Mooney. It's nothing.”

“Boyfriend still out of the country and all?”

Boyfriend is such a quaint word. What Sam Gianelli is when he's in town is my lover. On again, off again, granted. But when it's on, we don't spend a lot of our time doing boyfriend-girlfriend things. Mooney probably has a quaint word for it. Premarital sex. Sin, maybe. Adultery. I'm divorced and Sam is, too, but Mooney's Catholic.

“Yeah,” I said, resenting the sudden turn toward the personal when I hadn't even figured out a way to tell Mooney what I wanted to say. “You seeing anybody?”

“They hired a couple new uniforms who look promising,” Mooney said.

I wondered how I'd feel seeing Mooney with somebody else. Maybe if I could get jealous, there'd be hope.

“Mooney,” I said, “one thing you didn't mention when you were talking to Jamieson: the apartment. You find out anything about the apartment?”

“Huh?” Mooney said.

“The one on Westland.”

“Back to business, huh?”

I inhaled a wonton, sneezed. Sometimes the sauce goes down the wrong way.

“You okay?”

“I was just wondering if you found out anything else about the place, Mooney.”

“We talked to the landlord again,” he said with a sigh. “You remember the skinny guy, name of Canfield. He's the one who manages the property, and he's probably pretty small potatoes. It's owned by a real-estate trust. Canfield, Oates, and Heffernan—and God knows how many silent partners. Tax-dodge shit. But can you hold somebody responsible because somebody got killed on their property? I could harass them if I wanted to, send out city-code violations and stuff. But Canfield says he didn't know more than one woman was living there, and he says he never even met her. I've posted a guy at the door, to be around if any of the other people who used to sleep on those beds shows up. Nobody has. And the room was pretty bare, no clothes except what you saw, no luggage.”

“Maybe it was a staging area,” I said. “A kind of safe house for illegals. One night's lodging while passing through.”

“Could be. We don't know shit.”

“I sent Roz over to the Cambridge Legal Collective to see if they've heard anything about the place.”

“Good move,” Mooney said. “Let me know.”

It made me feel better to tell him something.

“Do you have any leads you're not talking about, Moon, any suspects?”

“Carlotta,” he said patiently, “you know how this goes. No arrest within twenty-four hours and you can figure there's going to be no arrest for a while. Some of these killings are weeks old; one could be months. Every time the phone rings, I hope it's not another one, and then I think the only way we're going to nail the guy is if he tries it again and screws up. And I'm afraid he won't screw up. You remember the profile of an FBI ‘organized'?”

“Normal guy,” I responded. “Drives a decent car. Married or has some kind of regular sex life, average or above-average intelligence …”

“And he's probably a first- or second-born child. Really helps yank him out of the general population.”

All through dinner the urge to confess grew, filling my stomach till I barely did credit to the food. I gave him a play-by-play on the last volleyball game, detailing the circumstances of my injury and venting my feelings about Miss Boston College. I asked about his mom, but my heart wasn't in it. We gossiped about friends in the Department. Every time I'd weaken and get ready to spill it about Hunneman's, he'd mention Jamieson and I'd hold my tongue. Finally I made a deal with myself. I'd wait a day. One day. Until my business with the
Herald
lady was done, until it worked or failed.

There's a phone in Mary Chung's vestibule. I excused myself hurriedly, dialed Marta. I'd intended to call earlier, to make sure Paolina had come home safely, to see if mother and daughter had reconciled.

I let it ring twenty times. Then I called my answering machine, buzzed for messages. Paolina's clear, high voice sang over the line.

“I'm okay, Carlotta,” she said carefully, “but I'm not going home. I just don't want to see my mother, not after what she said. Anyhow, don't worry. I'm safe and I'll call you soon. Bye.”

The machine let out its dismal beep and started up again with a salesman's pitch for attractive aluminum siding for my home.

How had Paolina known I'd been at her apartment? Had she eavesdropped long enough to hear my voice? Had Marta called me by name? Had she been hiding somewhere? Had she watched me search for her under the stoop?

I was torn between relief that she'd called and fury that she hadn't told me where she was calling from, where this safe haven was.

I went back to the table. My fortune cookie was a bust, one of those good-things-come-to-nice-people, lines. Mooney read his aloud: “You will have a romantic evening.” But when I asked to see it, he wouldn't let me.

24

Mooney insisted on taking a cab home. Of course, I was expecting to drive him, either back to the station to fetch his car, or home, or wherever he wanted to go; otherwise I wouldn't have let him escort me through the smelly alleyway and walk me all the way to my car, only to backtrack and flag a cab on Mass, Ave. Mooney has a streak of gallantry that irritates me. It's not that I despise protective gestures; it's just that they infringe on my freedom. Maybe what I'm insisting on here is the right to get mugged at night in a bad neighborhood, but what the hell, it's my call.

I took Mass. Ave. to Harvard Square, executing the required bypass of its main intersection and U-turning my way back onto Brattle Street. I could have taken Huron Avenue, but Brattle's an attractive street to cruise. You get to pass by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's house.

Lights blazed in my living-room window. I slipped the car into its spot in back of the house and hurried up the front walk, hoping to greet Paolina in the foyer.

I got the key in the lock and the door open before I heard the unexpected voice. It slowed my approach.

“Hello,” said Harry Clinton.

“Hi,” said Roz with an attempt to stifle a giggle.

They were seated too close together on the living-room couch. Roz laughed awkwardly. Clinton stood and continued, “I hope you don't mind me waiting for you inside. Roz said you wouldn't.”

He must have been there a while. Two empty glasses on the end table told the tale. Knowing Roz, I wondered if the encounter had progressed to intimacy. Most likely not; she had her clothes on, or at least she was wearing a subtle fuchsia T-shirt. Stretched tight across her chest, black letters said:
AUNTIE EM, HATE YOU! HATE KANSAS! TAKING THE DOG. DOROTHY
.

She got up and made a retreat toward the stairs, stammering meaningless, polite things like “Nice to have met you” and stuff. The T-shirt seemed to be all she had on, if you didn't count shoes. It was long enough for decency but not something I'd have recommended for answering the door to strangers. Her footsteps clattered up a flight. I listened to them fade.

“You keep weird office hours,” I said briskly. “What can I do for you?”

“The bruising's not bad, and it doesn't look swollen.”

My hand went automatically to my nose, touched my cheek.

“See a doctor?” he went on.

“No, Mom,” I said.

“Okay, forget it. I hope you don't mind the late visit.”

“Long as it's brief,” I said.

“Blunt, aren't you?”

“Direct,” I said. “I prefer direct.”

He took two steps forward. He was tall, maybe three inches taller than me. He wore a white-and-blue plaid shirt tucked into jeans, both cut with a Western flair unobtainable in Harvard Square. “Well, then, directly,” he said, “I came to tell you to lay off Hunneman's.”

I swallowed air. “That's pretty blunt.”

“It's an official Department request. If you don't back off, at least for a couple days, you're going to screw up a major undercover operation that's taken a hell of a lot of time and effort to set up. It's almost ripe, and the last thing we need is amateurs spooking the place.”

I licked my lips and tasted Szechuan peppers, along with the residue of that hated word
amateur
. “Why the hell don't the cops know about this?” I asked. I never thought for a minute that Mooney might have kept it from me, which was dumb. If he had orders to shut up, he'd shut up.

“Key people know. No need to spread the word. We want to make sure the sleazeballs aren't warned—or alarmed by strange visitors.”

Nobody had tailed me to Hunneman's. That meant an inside man, an undercover agent. Man or woman. I quickly reviewed the faces I'd seen at the factory.

“Who's this?” Clinton's drawl startled me. He'd moved across to the mantel, where he stood holding up a silver-framed photo of Paolina.

“My sister,” I said.

“You don't look alike,” he commented.

“She's my Little Sister from the Big Sisters organization.”

“Nice,” he said, setting the frame back carefully. “Pretty kid. She live close by?”

“Close,” I said. “If she's home.”

“Late to be out for a little girl.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. And I found myself telling Clinton about Paolina, how we'd met, how she'd changed, how worried I was about her. Chalk it up to anxiety, I guess. Told a perfect stranger something I hadn't told Mooney.

“She'll be fine,” he said.

His easy assurance was sandpaper on my nerves. “You don't have to worry about her,” I snapped. “She's legal.” I was tired as hell. Hints of my headache were coming back.

Clinton paced. “You don't like me, do you?”

“I don't like your job.”

“You one of those people who think all cops are pigs? You think my job's easy? Or unnecessary? You think we should just pack up and go home and let anybody in the front door? Criminals and smugglers and people with contagious diseases?”

I flopped onto the couch. “My grandmother came over from Poland without a dime. I guess I'm for ‘give me your tired, your poor.' That old stuff.”

“Which worked fine when we had the whole goddamn frontier out there. When we had plenty of room for plenty of people. They were giving away land back then, for chrissake. Homesteading. You want a family of five homesteading on your property?”

“I'm tired,” I said.

He went on as if he hadn't heard me. “And the hell of it is I almost agree with you. I work with a bunch of jerks. They've heard every hard-luck story so many times they don't hear anything anymore. They just file forms.”

“Your buddy Jamieson's supposed to be a great one for that,” I said. “He in on the Hunneman action?”

“Jamieson and I work together, but he's no buddy of mine. I'm not sure what he knows.”

He came over and joined me on the couch, sitting a bit farther away than he had from Roz. Our thighs didn't touch. I found myself wondering what it would feel like if they did.

He said softly, “We got somebody tipping off illegal establishments before we can get it together for a raid. Somebody on the inside.”

“You think Jamieson's the one?” Maybe that's why he was bird-dogging Mooney so closely, I thought. So he could warn somebody if the cops got hot.

“I didn't say that,” Clinton insisted. “Jamieson's got a lot of years in the service and a lot of friends.”

“Hard to believe the friends part.”

“Yeah,” he agreed with a grin, “I guess it is. Charming bastard, isn't he?” He stretched and stared around the room. “I like your place.”

“I'm tired,” I repeated. He'd given me a lot to mull over. I hoped I'd be able to sleep.

“Me too,” he said, but he didn't take the hint and stand up to leave.

I hoped Roz hadn't invited him to spend the night with her. I was conscious again of his blue-jeaned thigh, a lot closer to mine than it had to be.

He said, “It's the little factories that employ the women these days. The men mostly work at the racetracks, the stables. The pay's miserable and the bosses treat them like shit.” He sighed deeply. “Somebody's got to stop it, you know. It's all very well to stand back and not get your hands dirty, but it doesn't do any good in the long run.”