Yesterday's News (3 page)

“No.”

“Guy's got this sticker, says
METER MAIDS EAT THEIR YOUNG
. I love it.”

“May as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.”

“What?”

“I said—”

“I heard what you said. Who the hell was talking about livestock here?”

“Mo, it's just an—”

“You know, I gotta lot of work to do before deadline. I can't spend the whole afternoon bringing you back on track like this.”

“I know, Mo, and I appreciate it. I'm here about a client you referred to me. Jane Rust.”

Mo took a deep drag on the cigar, blew a perfect smoke ring, then another. “What did you think?”

“I met with her today, and I thought I'd come see you, find out what I might have on my hands.”

“This Rust. Mid-twenties, kind of mousy, nervous?”

I felt a little ping. “You don't know her.”

“I know her, I just don't
know
her, you know?”

“You lost me.”

Mo knocked some ashes into his drawer. “Couple of years ago, editor here got me a job teaching adjunct, a journalism school crosstown. This Rust was in one of my classes. Or so she said on the phone.”

“She called you Professor Katzen with me.”

“Hah.” Mo set down the cigar. “Professor Katzen. Yeah, she would, she's the one I'm thinking of.”

“She telephoned you?”

“Yeah. She needed an investigator to nose around Nasharbor. Somebody who wasn't already wired into the big boys down there.”

“She tell you why?”

“No. You gonna?”

“No. Statute says I can't. But I would like to know this—you figure her for a conspiracy nut?”

Mo stuck the cigar back into his mouth and spoke around it. “Can't help you there. I just don't remember her much. Only saw her for a couple of hours on maybe ten Tuesdays two years ago. She asked some questions, gave some answers, barely stuck in my mind.”

When I didn't reply, Mo said, “What I'm saying is, you don't owe me anything on this. You want to take her case, you take it. You don't, no offense on my part.”

I got up. “Thanks, Mo.”

Reaching the door, I heard him punch in a telephone number and say, “Parking Bureau? Listen, we gotta talk here.”

Walking back to the condo, I averted my eyes from the traitorous, but still empty, parking space. Upstairs, I showered and shaved for the second time that day, the face protesting that it was too soon to be scraped again. I used styptic pencil to stanch the blood, and aftershave to wipe off the white, powdery residue. Pulling on a Ralph Lauren Polo shirt and Reebok sport shorts for Nancy, I decanted a bottle of red wine and chopped some fresh spinach, prosciutini, and cheddar cheese into a simple salad.

The downstairs buzzer sounded. From the staircase, I could see her through the second of two glass-paneled doors. Lustrous black hair, charcoal suit, white ruffled blouse still looking fresh after a tough day litigating for the Suffolk County district attorney's office downtown.

I opened the door, and the hand that wasn't carrying her briefcase came out from behind her back. A mixed bouquet of flowers.

“Pity I just pawned the Ming vase.”

She went up on her toes to kiss me. “Only a Holy Cross grad would consider putting flowers in a Ming vase.” The kiss was sweet, a combination of nature and wintergreen Tic Tac.

“Let's continue this upstairs.”

Nancy followed me. “Your buzzer system broken?”

“No. After the nurse was raped and murdered on Commonwealth, we disconnected the door latch part of it.”

“Welcome to Back Bay.”

“Sorry.”

“I'm sorry, too. It's just been that kind of day.”

At the apartment door, I motioned for Nancy to step past me over the threshold. “Well, what do you think?”

She moved her head slowly around the apartment, taking in the polished oak-front fireplace, the lavender windows, and the Scandinavian Design furnishings. “I knew I should have gone to medical school.”

Nudging her toward the couch, I went to the kitchen. “Wine or hard stuff?”

“What's the wine?”

“Robert Mondavi, 1982 Cabernet Sauvignon.”

“You're impressing me.”

“Wait'll you see the receipt for the entree.”

“Maybe half a glass of the wine, John.”

I poured us both the same amount and carried the carafe and long-stemmed crystal on a Faneuil Hall Memorial tray.

Nancy smiled up at me. “After the day I've had, this is really wonderful.”

Putting the tray on the coffee table, I said, “Want to tell me about it?”

The smile faded. “Only briefly.”

“Only briefly” stretched into forty minutes and a second round of wine. Three guys in a local rock band fancied a cocktail waitress during a gig at one of the student madhouses in Allston. She didn't return quite the groupie fascination they'd come to expect, so they waited for her in their van afterward. Four hours later, they dumped her behind a boarded-up building in the Combat Zone.

Nancy said, “It was her mother made her go to the police the next day. Fortunately, she drew an officer who cared, and he triggered the Rape Unit.”

“Any physical evidence left?”

“Yes and no. The victim had bathed and douched herself for a couple of hours, which pretty well eliminated the semen and hair possibilities. But there were plenty of bruises, and a bartender who corroborates her story of the guys hitting on her beforehand.”

“Where are you now?”

“I just finished my direct of the bartender. Tomorrow, they'll cross him, then probably put their own clients on the stand.”

“That's pretty unusual, isn't it?”

“In most criminal cases, yes. But not in rape. Especially not in group rapes like this one. These guys aren't contesting that she was in the van and had intercourse with them. In fact, they bragged about it to their manager afterward. No, they're claiming consent, but they lost their motion to have her prior sexual behavior come in as an exception to the rape shield statute, so it pretty well leaves their word against hers and her physical condition, backed up by photographs at the district station the next day.”

“They have any priors?”

“No. Which makes them a lot harder to impeach. But I was watching them while we impaneled the jury. They're cocky, probably figuring the publicity they're getting will increase their name recognition for the future. I think that'll come across as guilty arrogance, not innocent righteousness, once I have a shot at them.”

We ate dinner, my filet mignon garnering almost the level of praise the price tag warranted. The wine was just right, and Nancy put some symphonic music on the stereo system that the doctor couldn't bear moving from the custom-built cabinet next to the hearth. We lay back, slanted in toward each other on the couch, sipping the last of the wine.

“I like where you live, John.”

“It's grown on me the last couple of hours.”

“Thanks to the company?”

“Mustn't fish for compliments, counselor.”

She slid her hand up to my neck, flicking and tugging gently on the roots right at the hairline.

I looked into her eyes, blue and wide-spaced, the freckles that multiplied week by week as the sun scaled higher in the early summer sky. “After the kind of stuff you had to deal with today, I'd understand if you'd rather not tonight.”

She moved her head slowly, left to right. “I waited long enough for you, John Cuddy. I'm not about to miss any chances now. And besides, after the kind of stuff I dealt with today, what I'd really like is a night of nice, slow lovemaking, to put sex back where it belongs rather than turn against it.” She stood up and walked to the stereo. “I know a lot of this is new for you still, and I don't want to suggest anything radical, but how would you like to make love to music tonight?”

“Good idea.”

“Any requests?”

“Well,” I said, putting down my glass and coming up behind her, “let's avoid the ‘Minute Waltz.'”

I got to a sitting position and picked up the telephone by the third ring. Every muscle was tight but strangely refreshed from the Nautilus workout and being with Nancy. The circulating floor fan blew the sheets against my legs as Nancy groped for an unfamiliar light switch. The luminescent dial on the clock radio read 5:45 A.M.

“Hello?”

“John?”

“Who is this?”

“John, it's Mo, Mo Katzen.”

“Mo. What the hell is it?”

“I'm in the newsroom, John. At the
Herald.
One of the guys here just heard from somebody he knows down near Nasharbor.”

“What happened?”

“It's the Rust girl. Jane Rust, the reporter. They found her dead in her apartment. Suicide, looks like.”

“Shit.”

“I thought you oughta know,” he said, and hung up.

H
OW DID
she die?

“I don't know, Beth.” Bending down, I arranged the mums longways to her. There were a few sport fishing boats in the harbor below her hillside, but the people on them looked more involved in basking than baiting and casting. “Preliminary indication is suicide, but I don't have any details.”

Were you going to take her case?

“I don't know that, either. Mo Katzen really couldn't vouch for her. She'd just been a student of his years ago. And she struck me as a little … high-strung.”

High-strung or strung out?

“Good question.”

I mean, do you think she was suicidal?

“No.” I was surprised to hear myself say that, but it was true. “No, when she left me, I thought she was getting a grip on herself, like talking with me had settled her down. She even gave me a check, which she figured would force me to get back to her.”

Which you wouldn't have been able to do if she'd killed herself in the meantime.

“Exactly. Of course, that doesn't mean that something couldn't have pushed her over the edge after she left me yesterday afternoon.”

Is it legal to keep her check?

“Getting mercenary?”

You know what I mean. Is it legal for you to go on after she's dead?

“There's nothing in the licensing statute, so Nancy couldn't say for sure. And it's tough for her to advise me when she's technically a government lawyer who's not supposed to be handling private clients.”

So what are you going to do?

“First, I'm going to pick up my new car.”

What happened to the Fiat?

“Forced retirement. The new one—or at least the newer one—is a Honda Prelude.”

From Renault to Fiat to Honda. Does that mean you're moving up in the world?

“At least moving.”

What are you going to do about the reporter?

“I'm going to drive down to Nasharbor, stay a few days, and see if I can convince myself that Jane Rust was both wrong and suicidal.”

Stay well.

I turned to go.

And John?

“Yes?”

Give Nancy my best.

“I will.”

The trip to Nasharbor was almost a pleasure. After paying for the Prelude at Arnie's and waiting in line at both the Registry of Motor Vehicles and my insurance agency, I took Route 3 to Route 128, and then Route 24 south toward the Narragansett coast. The Fiat had been one of the last cars imported before the catalytic converter-unleaded gas requirements and was a rocketship in its prime. However, the pressure of aging and the demise of leaded premium gas had reduced its acceleration mightily, and the gearshift, despite synchromesh, required double clutching half the time. By comparison, the Honda was smooth as silk and quick as a cat, the fifth gear allowing me to cruise near sixty at only 2,400 rpms. The car also sported a moon roof, retractable electrically, which created the illusion of a convertible provided I didn't turn my head too much.

Nasharbor itself, however, was an end that didn't justify the means. Patch-paved roads with gravel to fill the potholes. Dense, two-decker neighborhoods on hillsides overlooking abandoned mills. Adjacent, vacant lots in moonscape, strewn with washers missing lids, grocery carts without wheels, Ford Falcons and other ancients in random pieces.

Main Street was dominated by old structures of red and yellow brick, dingy and dowdy on blocks leavened by churches, taverns, and the occasional VFW or Moose hall. The displays of retail stores were sparse, as though there were inadequate inventory for both shelves and windows. Their patrons were flabby women in gaudy, mismatched blouses and pants. Outside, skinny men waited in bowling jackets and baseball caps, the crowns reaching too high above the forehead. Three kids with a bag of popcorn threw some at the window of a branch bank, the poor guy sitting inside frowning and wagging his head.

The
Beacon
sign appeared just to the harborside of downtown, but I drove past to the waterfront itself. Dilapidated wooden warehouses lay lengthwise on deteriorating pile and stone wharves. The wharves serviced oily, smoky fishing boats. Many of the boats approached fifty feet in length, painted whatever colors the marine hardware store suffered in overstock and bearing female names like
Marie
and
Tina II.

I stopped the car for a minute. Some of the fishermen, in port for the first time in probably a week, were hanging the nets to dry or hosing down the decks. Others stripped off the layers of oilskin slicker and sweater needed for warmth on the big water even on a summer's day. Working or changing, they yelled and laughed back and forth in Portuguese. I felt disoriented, marooned in another country.

I turned the key in the ignition and headed back toward the
Beacon.

“You what?”

“I said I want to see someone about Jane Rust. My name's John Cuddy, and I'm a private investigator from Boston.” I showed the woman at the horseshoe reception desk my identification.