Coyote (18 page)

“How long's this gonna take?”

“Depends how lucky we are. We're gonna park in a cab stand, and you'll look at some women and tell me if you see the one who brought that letter yesterday, and then I'll pay you. I don't want you identifying just anybody—”

“Hey, I wouldn't do that.”

“Good. If you're not sure, say so. Anybody you think of as a possible, I'll take her picture.” I indicated the camera I'd placed on top of the meter.

“Hey, I could do that,” she said. “I'm a great photographer.”

And here I thought her only outlet for artistic expression was the candy-cane stripes on her fingernails.

“Well, I'd like to be a photographer,” she amended, “but you can't make any good money at it.” She hefted the camera. “You ought to have a tripod.”

“I know. I thought it might be a little conspicuous.”

She held the thirty-five-millimeter to her eye. “Good long lens on this thing,” she said.

I'd borrowed it from Roz. She'd do the developing. For a price.

“I'd better take the shots,” I said. “You concentrate on the faces.”

I explained the layout to her on the way to Hunneman's. She asked very few questions, mainly about time and money, hers and mine.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the cab stand was clear. I hadn't wanted to get into a chummy conversation with a Town Taxi driver or into any competition either. A one-cab stand in a bad part of town probably didn't bring in a day's wage. I wondered if anybody ever used it and hoped the INS hadn't picked it as a prime surveillance spot.

It was great for watching the bus stop. If the lady left in a car, it might be a bit more difficult. I yanked a pair of binoculars out of my handbag, and Helen spent some time focusing them. I told her to use them as little as possible, just on parking-lot ladies.

Hunneman's windowless storefront made staying unobserved easier, but I kept looking around for phone-company vans, delivery trucks, other possible INS vehicles. I didn't want Clinton to catch me ignoring his warning.

The cab got stuffy and I cranked down my window. I instructed Helen not to point, to describe the clothing of the women I should photograph. I warned her that they poured out the door fast. We ate doughnuts and drank coffee. She didn't demand much in the way of conversation, and I was grateful for that.

I warned her about the kerchiefs.

“I'll work on eyes and hair,” she said.

“Think you can do it?”

“Photographer's eye,” she boasted. “If she walks by, you just be ready to snap her.”

Hunneman's doors yawned. I shrank back on the seat instinctively.

“Sit back,” I barked at Helen. “The idea is to see them without getting seen.”

“Whoa,” she said. “There's a lot of 'em.”

“Take them one at a time. Check out the ones who peel off to the parking lot first.”

“Shit,” Helen murmured. That was all she said for the next five minutes.

“Plaid skirt, pale blue blouse,” Helen said. “Ten feet down the front walk.”

“Sure?”

“Hell, no, she's just the closest I've seen.”

She was walking toward the bus stop. I focused and shot through the front glass, hoping the glare wouldn't kill the image.

“Green blouse,” Helen said. “She could be it. Got her?”

Another one heading for the bus stop. I hoped the bus would take its sweet time arriving. I picked up plaid skirt in another shot. Roz would have criticized the composition.

“This one with the beige flowered dress,” Helen said.

“Well, which one is it?”

“I'm doing my damned best,” she said.

I wondered if I should have brought more film. The third lady walked to a different bus stop, across the street. I saw Lilia out of the corner of my eye. Marta hadn't been able to stop her today.

“It's not the one getting into the gray Chevy on the lot, is it?” I asked.

“Nah.”

Something to be grateful for.

The crowd started thinning. The bus on the far side of the street arrived.

“Which of the three is most likely?” I asked.

“Green blouse.”

“Why?”

“I don't know. I'm not sure. The walk.”

The bus swallowed up flowered dress. I could see another bus approaching in my rearview mirror. The women crowded toward the street, clutching their handbags.

“That's about it.” Helen gave a deep, relieved sigh. “Doors have been closed a while.”

The women streamed onto the bus.

“Take another look at those two,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “I think the green, but I'm not a hundred percent sure.”

The bus took off. I hit the ignition and followed.

“Hey—” Helen said.

“I know, this isn't in the deal.” I fumbled the agreed-upon cash out of my pocket, added ten more. “I'm going to drop you at the next light. Take a cab or something. If I need you, I'll be in touch.”

She could follow orders. She put the binoculars down on the seat and got her hand on the door handle, ready to fly. As soon as I stopped at the corner of North Beacon and Market, she was gone.

The bus turned left, and so did I.

27

As soon as I dumped Helen, I switched tapes and elevated the volume on my boom box. Rory Block came in loud and clear, singing about lovin' a country boy with hayseeds in his hair. My driving cap was starting to feel tight around the edges, so I ditched it, rearranging my hair with a shake of my head.

Buses are not a big challenge to tail. They're hard to lose, what with planned routes, behemoth size, and obliging city officials who paint numbers on each and every one. But following them has its drawbacks. This one, not one of the city's newer efforts, smelled. I kept dropping farther and farther back, but the odor remained overwhelming, and I had to breathe through my mouth.

The tricky part was checking out the bus stops. Not many folks departed at the first Market Street stops, which helped, and cabs can drive as erratically as they please in Boston, the benefit of a hard-won reputation. I've seen plenty weirder cab behavior than jerking to a stop twenty feet behind a bus. I mean, some desperate jockey might be hoping one of the heavily burdened women on the bus couldn't face the walk home.

I still hadn't decided whether to track Green Blouse or Plaid Skirt. Helen had declared Green Blouse her favorite, but she hadn't sounded too sure.

I wasn't familiar with the bus route. I thought a lot of different buses might plow down Market Street at some point or other, peeling off to Brighton Center, Cambridge Street, even Newton. I hoped the bus driver was one of those rare samaritans who believed in signaling.

The driver didn't believe in pulling fully into the right-hand lane to discharge passengers. I mean, why bother, when you can block the whole road? So screening the departing passengers wasn't as hard as it might have been. I recognized some of the Hunneman women by the kerchiefs around their necks. My two targets stayed on board.

In Brighton Center the bus flipped its left-turn signal and promptly pulled right to a dead stop. A blue Plymouth honked while its driver shoved a finger out the window. I caught a glimpse of Green Blouse climbing down the steps.

Quickly I slid over into the wake of the bus and shoved the cab into park. I was out on the street before I even thought about the legality of the maneuver.

Green Blouse was chatting with another woman at the bus stop, grinning and talking. I loitered, watching her reflection in a storefront window. Twenty-one would be about right, I thought. She had an unlined round face, mainly eyes and cheeks, with no discernible bone structure underneath. The green blouse was untidily tucked into a rust-colored skirt with a too-tight waistband. Either the skirt was borrowed or the woman had gained weight.

She said good-bye to her friend and started to walk away. I turned. Our eyes met.

She gasped, a sound audible more than thirty feet away, and fled, leaving her companion open-mouthed. I had damn near the same reaction. I hadn't expected the woman to know me. I'd have tailed her a lot differently if I had.

I took off after her.

She hesitated a moment, then plunged into the open doors of a Woolworth's. I cursed. A big store full of aisles and crowds was all I needed. I pushed my way in past a nun buying a 3 Musketeers bar, gawked at the endless choices. Had Green Blouse gone for the plant aisle, the knitting and sewing area, the household goods? I took the center aisle, the path of least resistance, pushed all the way to the back of the store where the canaries and budgies fussed and whistled in their cages. At every crossroad I checked left and right. No Green Blouse.

I traveled the perimeter of the store next, counterclockwise, looking down all the aisles. I saw a woman's shoe under a counter and approached it stealthily, frightening a store employee. I almost tripped over a rack of umbrellas.

I went back to the front door and paced there for fifteen long minutes, keeping track of all departing customers. Then I had the bright idea of asking whether there was another exit.

Just for the employees, the woman behind the counter said. I did another circuit and got what I expected. Nothing.

Damn. The woman must have known about the employees' exit, gone straight through.

Well, I'd taken her photograph. I could show it to Marta and get something to go on.

Sure. Marta had been damned cooperative so far.

I headed back to the cab. It had a line of angry cars behind it. Each one honked before giving up and pulling into the center lane. A silver-haired man in a three-piece suit leaned out his tinted BMW window and told me what the hell was wrong with the world and with people like me.

I couldn't have agreed with him more.

28

Roz was in the kitchen stoking her fires with peanut butter when I slammed the kitchen door by way of hostile greeting.

She didn't bother to turn. She held the refrigerator door open, using it for air-conditioning while she fingered peanut butter directly from jar to mouth. I got a good view of her butt, clad in skin-tight black leggings. I busied myself at the sink, which was laden with dirty dishes. I never do the dishes; that's Roz's job.

“You're gonna break those,” she ventured finally when the clattering got too much for her nerves.

“Yeah,” I muttered, “but at least they'll be clean.”

“Leave it I'll do 'em.”

“This year?”

“Oooh, bad day, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe I can—”

I turned to face her. She was out of the fridge by now, licking her index finger.

“You can try to explain about Paolina,” I said. “But I doubt if you can. Shit, Roz, you let me spend the whole damn night wondering where she was, worrying—”

“She swore she'd run away if I told anyone. Anyone including you. I figured—”

“You should have figured out a way to tell me.”

“I wanted her to trust me. She needed to trust somebody. She's all screwed up.”

I shook water off some silverware, shoved it into a drawer without bothering to sort it, and banged the drawer shut.

“Well, where is she?” I demanded.

“I don't know,” Roz said sheepishly, staring down at the floor. If she looked at the linoleum more often, I thought, she might get inspired to mop it.

“You're lying,” I said. “She told you not to tell me.”

“Honest, I don't have a clue,” she maintained. “I'd tell you if I did.”

“Like last night.”

“You want to pick a fight, go ahead, but I don't know where she is.”

“Do you know when she'll be back?”

“I don't even know if. She was gone when I got up.”

“You didn't even feed her?”

“She was gone, Carlotta. Christ, what do you want me to say?”

“Shit.” I dropped into a chair at the kitchen table.

“What's going on?” Roz asked.

“Good question.” I ran my hand over the tabletop. It was gritty and sticky. Roz and I were overdue for a housework confrontation. I'm not fussy, but things were getting out of control. Maybe Roz was planning to do a series of acrylics featuring kitchen slime. “She overheard her mom say some nasty things about her. But there's something else. She's been cutting school a lot, ever since she got back from Colombia.”

“Drugs?”

The minute you say Colombia, people think drugs. “Hell, no,” I said. “She's ten years old.”

“Since when did you get naïve?”

“Look, Roz, anything you can tell me—”

“Carlotta, I can't tell you about the kid. Not won't, can't. She didn't confide. I just figured better here than on the streets. That's all. But I can tell you something about the other business. That lawyer, the ritzy one from the Cambridge Legal Collective, called with the stuff you wanted, about the apartment building on Westland Avenue. Negative. She hasn't got any clients who claim to live there. Or on the whole block. And I read up on Hunneman Pillows. It's closely held, with stock owned in three names: mostly by a James Hunneman, but his wife has a chunk under the name Lydia Canfield, and then there's some under Blair Jeffries.”

“Canfield,” I repeated, drumming my fingers on the table.

“Yeah,” she said, “sorry I didn't come up with anything else.”

“If Paolina comes back, keep her here, for chrissake. I don't care if you tie her up.”

“Where will you be?” Roz started to ask. But by then I had checked the phone book and was slamming the front door.

29

It was after six by the time I stuck my car in the lot behind the station. A fiery disk of sun crouched on the horizon, burning the western sky. The fading light brought an unexpected pang of regret. September and October are precious in New England, clear and crisp, painfully short. Between this Manuela business and the volleyball tournament I hadn't taken Paolina apple picking, or up to the White Mountains to view the sweep of changing foliage. The early sundown warned of coming winter.