Authors: David Daniel
Goofy Foot (16 page)
One of the catering staff came in and told Rand he had a telephone call. He excused himself and went out. I saw my opportunity to leave. I wanted to get back to Lowell tonight to check out some things in the morning. I found hostess Clarissa and told her I was going. “Aw, aren't y'all stayin' for the fun? I'm just puttin' up some coffee.”
“I always end up with a lamp shade on my head and hunting for my clothes.”
“Oh, you.” She made a gracious little pout. “How'm I gonna hold my own with all these Yankees?”
“You'll do fine, girl,” I assured her, “just remember that around here, âyawl' is a sailboat.”
The valets were huddled in the bushes as I went out. There was no disguising their teal shirts or the pot smoke. When my kid brought the Ford around, I showed him Michelle's photograph. His partner joined us. They gave it glassy-eyed regard, and then my kid nodded. “Yeah, dude, I've seen her.”
“Where?”
“I know exactly where.” He glanced at his partner. “How about on a mattress in the back of my van.” He slapped his partner's upraised palm.
He snickered and turned away. I caught him from behind and yanked the hem of the shirt up around his shoulders and ears. As he struggled against the tight fabric, I spun him in three quick circles and pushed him into a clump of forsythia. His partner just cowered and gaped at the whole show. Driving out, I spotted the old judge. He was looking past an earnest young woman who was trying to tell him something, staring at me as though he were weighing evidence. I flashed him Red Dog's thumb and pinky finger surfer sign.
Before I hit the highway, I stopped and bought a coffeeâthe old-fashioned kind, with just coffee in itâand actually got halfway back to Lowell before opening my eyes between blinks came less and less often. I drew off at a rest area and climbed out. Inland there was not a whisper of a cool breeze. I stood in the hot, buggy dark, sharing the night with a steel hauler tightening his load. I pinwheeled my arms and then leaned against the car and stretched the way, at my age, I should before and after a run but never do. When I felt as awake as I was going to get without amphetamines, I got back on 128 and put the Probe at seventy-five.
It was the hushed time long past midnight when the highway was a quiet canyon and the mostly empty parking lots of the high-tech companies gleamed with sodium-vapor light. The janitors had gone home, and the night watchmen were sacked out surveilling the inside of their eyelids, and only the workaholics intent on making associate VP were still at it. That was the brief hour of inward gazing when you realized how America got so strong and wondered if it really was our destiny or just a sorry wrong turn we'd made. I didn't invest my time pondering it. I got back to my apartment exhausted but wide-awake and thinking about Michelle Nickerson. I wanted
to speak with her mother and ask some of the questions that had begun to take root in my mind, but it would have to wait for a more civil hour. Paula Jensen didn't stay as pretty as she was by receiving phone calls at 2 A.M.
to speak with her mother and ask some of the questions that had begun to take root in my mind, but it would have to wait for a more civil hour. Paula Jensen didn't stay as pretty as she was by receiving phone calls at 2 A.M.
I poured a nightcap and tipped back in my lounger, but still my brain whined along at a highway hum. Had the evening netted me anything other than more questions? Add that one. Maybe an old movie would help me focus, something of earlier vintage than
Pretty Woman
, but all I got were people in K-Mart suits talking about how to get rich and stay rich, and ads for the Harmonicats' biggest hits, on CD or cassette, which I probably already had around there on vinyl somewhereâfor all I knew I had them wedged into the cassette player in my car. TV programmers ran the purest crap at this hour because no one was watching it, and if anyone was, they deserved it. I killed the dreck, poured a nightcap and went out on my tiny porch. It was a far cry from Ted Rand's Tuscan courtyard, and the air was humid as a viewing booth at an adult bookstore, but it was home.
Pretty Woman
, but all I got were people in K-Mart suits talking about how to get rich and stay rich, and ads for the Harmonicats' biggest hits, on CD or cassette, which I probably already had around there on vinyl somewhereâfor all I knew I had them wedged into the cassette player in my car. TV programmers ran the purest crap at this hour because no one was watching it, and if anyone was, they deserved it. I killed the dreck, poured a nightcap and went out on my tiny porch. It was a far cry from Ted Rand's Tuscan courtyard, and the air was humid as a viewing booth at an adult bookstore, but it was home.
If I were Nero Wolfe, this would be the time when I'd start laying things out for Archie Goodwin, making clear all the connections I'd put together in my head. Alas, I had only me. I got in bed. One thing I could do was quit wondering about Satan Bugg. Beyond Michelle's interest in their music, I realized they had no link to this. But I didn't seem to be so clear about much else. It was as if Standish, for all of my status as an outsider, was determined to draw me into its warp and woof, and given what I had seen tonight, I sensed that the town had threads running right up to Beacon Hill. Though trying to find a link there to the Nickersons' being missing was a stretch I couldn't make. No, I was still thinking about the idea that Ben had come to town looking for something, probably money, to keep his business afloat. He'd been there five days. He'd have made his play by now. And yet, no one had heard a word. I had a bad feeling. I didn't want to have it, but I had it nevertheless. It churned around on the surface of my brain for a while, then it sank, and I did, too.
At 9 A.M. I phoned the Major Crimes Bureau and asked for Ed St. Onge. His greeting sounded testy. “Hot,” I said, to soften him up.
“It's not the heat; it's the stupidity. Where the hell have you been?”
“Me? Tokyo, Nairobi, London. I came back when I got homesick.”
“Get down to your office if you're not there already.”
Before I could wish him a pleasant morning, a hang-up clattered in my ear. I got downtown in twenty minutes. As I stepped into the lobby, I was almost knocked over by St. Onge, or by what he shoved at me. It was a manila folder. “From department files,” he said.
“Personal delivery?”
“I don't like to advertise.” He nodded toward the elevator door. “That out of service again?”
“No, it just doesn't work. Do we need to talk?”
“In private. Upstairs.”
I gathered the mail from a box marked “third floor” and we climbed the zigzagging flights together, our combined eighty-plus years weighing on us like destiny and making us breathe hard. He was a native, like I was; he'd grown up in Little Canada. He got
through school a few years ahead of me, and through the service, too, but neither of us had hit escape velocity. As cops we'd worked in the Major Crimes unit together, had been friends, danced with each other's wives at the policeman's ball. I was his daughter's godfather. Ed was still a cop, and he and Leona were still together, with their daughter doing a medical residency out west. He was the best police detective in the city, if you didn't count his suits. He bought clothes the way most people bought milk, grabbing the first unit on the shelf; they didn't come with an expiration date, though. His current drape was a polyester-sport-coat-and-wool-slacks combo in shades of mustard and maroon. He was the one person in Lowell who didn't mention the city golf tournament, because, like me, he didn't care crap about it. I wasn't sure what we were to each other anymoreâ“friends” didn't seem to cover itâbut I didn't waste time trying to figure it out, and I doubted he did, either. He held his tongue until I unlocked the waiting room door and we stepped into the nerve center. “I'm sweating already. No AC either?”
through school a few years ahead of me, and through the service, too, but neither of us had hit escape velocity. As cops we'd worked in the Major Crimes unit together, had been friends, danced with each other's wives at the policeman's ball. I was his daughter's godfather. Ed was still a cop, and he and Leona were still together, with their daughter doing a medical residency out west. He was the best police detective in the city, if you didn't count his suits. He bought clothes the way most people bought milk, grabbing the first unit on the shelf; they didn't come with an expiration date, though. His current drape was a polyester-sport-coat-and-wool-slacks combo in shades of mustard and maroon. He was the one person in Lowell who didn't mention the city golf tournament, because, like me, he didn't care crap about it. I wasn't sure what we were to each other anymoreâ“friends” didn't seem to cover itâbut I didn't waste time trying to figure it out, and I doubted he did, either. He held his tongue until I unlocked the waiting room door and we stepped into the nerve center. “I'm sweating already. No AC either?”
I hauled open a window and emancipated several days' worth of trapped heat and an exasperated bluebottle, which bumbled out into the city day. St. Onge peeled off his sport coat and tossed it on the chair. “You ought to take a vacation from this,” he said.
“Are you paying? Didn't think so. Anyway, on
Hollywood Squares,
they asked, âWhat goes down after a two-week vacation?' Know the answer?”
Hollywood Squares,
they asked, âWhat goes down after a two-week vacation?' Know the answer?”
“Goes down?”
“Gets lower, yeah. Guess.”
“Bank account? I don't know. Blood pressure?”
“IQ. People come back dumber than they went.”
He frowned. “But it comes back, right? Once the challenges of the job return?”
“This was
Hollywood Squares,
not
Nova.
The point is I'm a one-man think tank. I can't afford the brain drain. Take a seat,” I said. “Something cold to drink?”
Hollywood Squares,
not
Nova.
The point is I'm a one-man think tank. I can't afford the brain drain. Take a seat,” I said. “Something cold to drink?”
He took neither. He gestured at the manila folder he'd given me in the lobby. “The kid you asked about is Ross Jensen's stepdaughter.”
“I know.”
“Then why the hellâ?”
I was surprised, too. “You know Jensen?”
“You could say that. He cost you and me tax dollars, and Grady Stinson his badge.”
I sat down. Stinson was a patrolman who'd been suspended after a complaint from someone who said the cop broke his arm during a traffic stop. “Jensen brought that case?”
“His firm.”
“Randolph, Blinkman and Bearse.”
St. Onge sat, too, and gauged me a moment, probably trying to see what else I was holding from him. The truth is, I hadn't known who had represented the plaintiff, but it came to me now. It wasn't the first complaint in Grady Stinson's file. “The city settled out of court,” Ed said. “I heard one-point-something. Stinson's still on suspension pending a job hearing.” St. Onge shook his head. “Between us, it isn't going to happen for him. He was walking toward a deep hole for a long time. I've got no tears. But I hate to see the dirt thrown onto good cops, and I don't like seeing the city bleed bucks it needs for important things because some gang of pinstripes gets greedy.”
“I'm just looking into a missing kid, Ed.”
St. Onge grunted. “Jensen's?”
“Off the record. His stepdaughter.”
Ed ran a hand over his graying mustache. “I didn't hear about it.”
“That's how the family has wanted it.”
“Domestic?”
“It may be. She was on vacation with her father. I've been down on the South Shore, trying to backtrack them.”
He nodded. “Cops down there inâwhere the hell is it?”
“Standish.”
“âthey doing anything?”
I told him how it stood with Chief Delcastro and his crew. He listened and made sounds of empathy and wished me luck. As he started out, he paused and frowned at the water-stained ceiling above the door. “Won't the landlord fix the roof?”
“Right after the elevator and the AC. I give Rorschach tests in my spare time.”
“Keep wisecracking, one of these days the tiles will start dropping on your head.”
“The whole universe is in entropy, Ed. Why should I expect special treatment?” I picked up the manila folder. “Thanks for this.”
“What the hell, if it'll help you find the kid. Plus taking some of Ross Jensen's money can never be a bad thing.”
Â
Â
I gave my morning's mail the five seconds it deserved, put my attorney neighbor's batch in a separate pile and made coffee. I went through the file Ed St. Onge had left. It was the police report for the night that Michelle Nickerson and three other juveniles and one eighteen-year-old were picked up after a concert at the Auditorium. There was also the case's disposition. Beyond a loitering charge for the adult, later dismissed, no charges were filed.
In this business, when leads are scarce, you give up or you keep scraping the pan. I called Bob Whitaker across the street at the
Sun
and laid out what I was after. He said he might have something, why didn't I drop by in an hour when he took his break. I told him I'd bring lunch.
Sun
and laid out what I was after. He said he might have something, why didn't I drop by in an hour when he took his break. I told him I'd bring lunch.
I tracked an address and phone number for Grady Stinson. As with too many cops, his domestic situation and his home address were subject to change. He was currently rooming in a place over in the Lower Highlands. I dialed it and got a man with a voice like a rusty damper grating in a chimney.
“Stinson?”
“Who's this?”
I told him and mentioned that we'd overlapped on the LPD for a few years. “Oh,” he said. “Yeah.”
I told him what I was after.
“Can't yap right now, bud. I'm on my way to the golf tourney.”
Suspension with pay was good work if you could get it. “How about later? Have you got any openings?”
“Come three o'clock I always get thirsty. Know where the Mill Stone is? On Decatur, off Moody?”
I said I thought I could find it.
Remembering a mental note, I opened my closet and retrieved the old sawed-off twelve-gauge I'd inherited. It didn't seem quite so ugly as it had the day before yesterday, maybe because it wasn't pointed at me. Mostly, it just looked grimly efficient. I took a pair of running shoes and sweats out of a gym bag and put the shotgun inside and zipped the bag up. It could pass for a fungo bat. I took it down to the parking lot behind the building and locked it in the trunk of my car, then went around the corner to the pizzeria.
“Ehh, my friend!” Vito called out when he saw me. We shook hands and I told him my visit was strictly food-related. I ordered a pair of sandwiches for take-out. In the
Sun
I checked the box scores for the Spinners, the Red Sox farm club that the city was crazy about. When Vito brought over the sandwiches, wrapped to go, along with a large antipasto salad I hadn't ordered, he waved away payment. “Just to tell you, I'm going to have a dealer look atâ” I mimed pulling a trigger. “If it's worth anything, I'll let you know.”
Sun
I checked the box scores for the Spinners, the Red Sox farm club that the city was crazy about. When Vito brought over the sandwiches, wrapped to go, along with a large antipasto salad I hadn't ordered, he waved away payment. “Just to tell you, I'm going to have a dealer look atâ” I mimed pulling a trigger. “If it's worth anything, I'll let you know.”
“Whatever you say, Mr. Rasmussen, it's good with me.”
I walked over to the
Sun,
whose headquarters building faced mine in a flatiron across Kearney Square. I had told Bob Whitaker about Michelle Nickerson's having been picked up with some other kids in February for loitering. At his desk in the newsroom he opened an envelope and took out an eight-by-ten photo. It was of Michelle Nickerson, playing field hockey.
Sun,
whose headquarters building faced mine in a flatiron across Kearney Square. I had told Bob Whitaker about Michelle Nickerson's having been picked up with some other kids in February for loitering. At his desk in the newsroom he opened an envelope and took out an eight-by-ten photo. It was of Michelle Nickerson, playing field hockey.
“The name rang a bell when you told me, so I checked my shoot notes and realized I'd taken some team stuff at a game in Apple Valley last year.”
She had her mother's looks: delicate features and shining hair, a little defiance in the mouth, a lot of uncertainty in the eyes, which, though the black-and-white didn't show me, I knew would be pale blue. Maybe Red Dog Van Owen could tell if she was a natural athlete from a photo, but I couldn't. “Would you have anything from the police roust?”
“Only a mental image. I recognized her as the same kid. I didn't shoot anything that nightâhell, they were children. If they keep coming back for more, my heart quits bleeding, but what kid doesn't make a mistake? Her father's Ross Jensen, no?”
“Stepfather.”
“I happened to be at the cop shop that night when he came in to get her. He was doing a controlled burn, one of those things when the mouth goes a little wobbly and the ears get red from the pressure inside, but the words and the mannerisms are all checked and civil. When do guys like that blow off steam? Clapping at a polo match?”
“Do you recall what
she
looked like that night?”
she
looked like that night?”
He nodded at the field-hockey shot. “Different from that. Hair as flat black as auto primer, whitish skin, ring in her eyebrowâyou know the look. Goth. Black T-shirt and skirt, black tights, a pair of Docs.”
“Docksiders with black tights?”
“Martens.”
“Right.”
“I could hear the âThat does it, young lady' talk coming, but she seemed as if she knew it, too. I liked her spunk. Hang on to that if you want.”
I slipped the print back into the envelope. It filled a gap between what the Jensens had given me and the Polaroid Red Dog Van Owen had supplied. I was assembling a gallery of photographs, but I wanted to find the girl.
Back across the square, I paused before the window of World Wide pawnshop. I wondered if the shotgun would yield a few dollars, but I didn't go in to find out. I peered in at the cheap wristwatches and fourteen-karat jewelry, beat guitars that hadn't seen action since Gerry and the Pacemakers, jackknives, hot plates and bowling trophies. It was the detritus of troubled lives. In Ross Jensen's world, stuff merely collected in garages and basements; here it was turned to meager cash to pay the rent, to buy a drink, or a bus ticket out of town. And yet trouble had invaded the Jensens' world, too. No one was immune. I still had a couple hours before I saw Grady Stinson. I got my car and drove over to south Lowell.
Â
Â
This was the plug-ugly side of the city, with its rusty rail yards, soot-stained warehouses, boiler works, steam plants, stagnant canals, and,
a little farther out, more graveyards than in Transylvania. The brick buildings all had a glum air of entrenchment, and the horizon was pricked by tall stacks that had last blown smoke when Reagan had, in his cowboy getup, shilling for cancer sticks in
Collier's
. Students from the U. sometimes trekked over with notebooks and mini tape recorders to sample real life and write papers for Sociology 101. If Bukowski were still kicking, he'd make a poem of it, but he wasn't and it wasn'tâa poem, that is. It was blackened structures, and vacant lots with last-month's news yellowing crisp in the high weeds, and crapped-out lottery tickets, like the windblown hopes of life's original survivors, the losers. It was a district of gang graffiti and vicious dogs caged behind chain-link, some with four legs. My car stood out by having tires. Somewhere, a pile driver was hammering, shaking my fillings as I got out, and the wind blew cold, even in July.
a little farther out, more graveyards than in Transylvania. The brick buildings all had a glum air of entrenchment, and the horizon was pricked by tall stacks that had last blown smoke when Reagan had, in his cowboy getup, shilling for cancer sticks in
Collier's
. Students from the U. sometimes trekked over with notebooks and mini tape recorders to sample real life and write papers for Sociology 101. If Bukowski were still kicking, he'd make a poem of it, but he wasn't and it wasn'tâa poem, that is. It was blackened structures, and vacant lots with last-month's news yellowing crisp in the high weeds, and crapped-out lottery tickets, like the windblown hopes of life's original survivors, the losers. It was a district of gang graffiti and vicious dogs caged behind chain-link, some with four legs. My car stood out by having tires. Somewhere, a pile driver was hammering, shaking my fillings as I got out, and the wind blew cold, even in July.
Some things in life don't change. Charley Moscowitz, for one. He was the son of a Lowell Greek who'd married a Lowell Jew. In the backyard, beyond a corrugated sheet-metal fence, rose a ziggurat of cubed rust. Moscowitz's living was scrap metal; his passion was guns. He operated out of a Quonset hut with tin signs for makes of car that hadn't rolled off assembly lines since Iacocca was in knickerbockers. Charley was out back, lying in a nylon-mesh chaise, holding one of those winged aluminum reflectors under his chin, so that his face glowed with otherworldly light. “You take that thing in trade?” I greeted.
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