Boston Noir (18 page)

It had been a decent ruse, and it might have worked, everyone believing the MOD were on another search-and-rampage mission but had been spooked by something--a noise, a neighbor--into leaving before they could gut the house of its possessions, except for one small but critical error.
Can't Stop. Won't Stop
, besides being unusually well-punctuated with apostrophes and a period, had been sprayed with blue paint. The MOD were Bloods--red bandanna. Blue was the color of the Crips, their rivals.

In the end, the charges against Caroline were dropped. She had no alibi for the hours after the restaurant closed at 10:30, but there was little evidence to prosecute her, no prints, no eyewitnesses of a woman with long hair on a bicycle, nothing incriminating found in her house like a spray-paint can or soiled clothes.

Nonetheless, Caroline Yip chose to leave town. Toua saw her as she was packing up a U-Haul van to drive to California.

"She used you, you know."

"I think if anyone did,
you
used me," Toua said.

"You have a funny way of interpreting things. Don't you get it? She faked it. She set me up. Set
you
up. Hasn't that occurred to you? Marcella invented this insidious plot to frame me and run me out of town."

"Why would she do that?"

"Who knows. What makes one person want to destroy another? Huh? She has everything, yet it's not enough."

"There's no point in pretending anymore."

"She's a vulture. She has some sick bond to me. She
needs
to humiliate me. She
needs
my misery. She can't function without it."

"You need help."

She slammed the doors to the van shut. "I feel sorry for you," Caroline said. "You missed it. It could have been something real, and you missed it."

He watched her maneuver the van down the driveway and onto the street, then headed inside the studio to pack his own possessions. He had things to do. First on the list, he needed a bed for his new apartment.

Could Marcella Ahn have been that smart and calculating? He hadn't looked at the water bill very closely. She could have doctored it. She could have known all along that he'd been on the MOD task force. She could have wrecked her own home, orchestrating everything to this outcome.

He picked up his duffel bag. He didn't want to believe it. Believing it would mean that Caroline was right, he'd missed his chance to emerge from the deadness he felt. It was easier to believe, all things considered, that he'd been betrayed by her. She was a devious person, a liar, conniving and malicious, rent with envy, hopelessly bitter. It was comforting to think so. He could live with that kind of evil. It had a passion and direction he could understand, even a touch of poetry.

H
ey. You better snap the fuck out if it," Nina told him, popping her fingers in a circle around his head. "She's not your friend. She's the
en-na-mee,"
Nina half sang. Didn't think she had to emphasize the obvious to a thirty-two-year-old ex-Marine on his way to a doctorate from M.I.T. But the more she heard, the more she wondered about the terms of discharge and criteria for admission.

Isaac faced an assault charge that was aggravated, Nina discovered, by stupidity: violation of a restraining order.

"You don't know to cross the street if you see her?"

"She was boarding the same bus."

"What's your point?" That's all they had at Dudley Station, transfer point to anywhere in Boston--buses. "Take another one."

And his stab at "resolving things"--on the crowded #1 to Cambridge--happened
after
the arraignment.

At the arraignment, his best friend showed up with both sets of grandparents, a trio of uncles, and a chorus of cousins.

"I didn't know she had that many relatives in America," the ex-corporal droned, still shocked and awed.

Nina tilted her close-cropped curls and smiled, picturing it. "You think she flew some in from Johannesburg?"

"And she was wearing her collar." Isaac said it in a slow monotone matching the zombie gaze that was pissing Nina off. "I've known that girl three years and I ain't never seen her wear her collar."

The divinity school grad had a tongue-twisting South African name. Isaac called her
Sindi
for short. Nina Sojo liked
Collar
, and couldn't help smiling a little when she thought of her. Collar wanted blood.

They were sitting at Nina's dining table. A used Queen Anne repro someone had painted high-gloss white. The chairs too. Isaac drew his finger down the side of an ice-filled glass of lemonade. He examined the trail.

"Do you want me to help you find a lawyer or not?"

He winced, but kept looking at the glass.

Nina pulled back, slow and haughty. Frowning deepened the groove between her brows. It was the only line in her bare moon face. She never wore makeup offstage.

The Boston Yellow Pages was sitting there on the table. She'd been looking up lawyers. Now she stared through him, picked up the directory, and gave him her half-bare back. The crisp white top was sleeveless and gathered in a tie under her holstered breasts. The naked skin from there to her hips was the color of dark honey. The jeans gripped just below her waist. Everything looked tight. But unhike those tits, lay Nina flat, and the twins danced the slide. Shock at her body's betrayal lent Nina Isaac's zombie stare. She'd had to smack herself one morning while looking in the mirror. It is what it is, she finally told herself. The change had happened between cities and lovers. Vancouver and Boston. The economist and the chemical engineer. The engineer hadn't minded: Isaac made clear the pussy was good. "Hot and wet. Just the way I like it." But post-forty pussy stayed in the house. You didn't date it. You could take it to Starbucks, but not to see
Monster's Ball.
"You kidding?" Isaac had shook his head at the accusation. "Oh. Okay. I tell you what: let's flip the script and do the movie. Cause it's not like you really hittin' that other thang too good. Know what I'm sayin'?" She had counted on the lockdown to make him want it. When he did: "Uh-uh. You don't know how to treat me." That was February. It was June now. Pussy was still on strike.

She pushed the phone book onto a loaded shelf, then rummaged the refrigerator to make a doggie bag for Isaac's cousin Devon.

Two sets of tall bookcases standing back-to-back divided the kitchen area from the rest of the bright, loftlike unit. She'd moved in two days after 9/11. The space was a quality reno off Moreland in one of Roxbury's historic districts. Unpacked boxes draped with white sheets were still ghostly roommates after nine months. The stacked cartons formed an undulating cityscape and dividing line. On one side: her Yamaha Clavinova and shelved music collection. On the other: a computer workstation near the dining table that doubled as a desk, two halogen torch lamps, and Isaac on her futon. Staring at the ceiling lights and fake-wood trusses. Or just in that direction.

Isaac asked her something she pretended not to hear.

About now, she was feeling the Newark brother who'd put those bookshelves together. Always helpful, fun over a beer, and a professional cook who had dinner waiting when she came home. And the dick was good. Just too much insecurity attached. He never finished high school. Dropped out to raise two younger brothers who did. She thought all that admirable and said so. But Chef was always comparing himself to someone like Isaac.
Dr. M.I.T.,
the chef called him.

What came
after
was always the best part of sex with Isaac. Wet clinches in a hot shower. Long, Marine-hard body. Infinitesimal dick. Isaac was a cuddler. The curves of their bodies met in wet suction and held. Tight. In her mouth, his tongue was well-schooled. Between her thighs, his fingers were too. When she was light-headed in the steam, Isaac Sayif's tenderness could feel like love.

His hand touched her shoulder.

"Did you say you knew a judge?" he repeated.

Nina had been away from Boston for decades. But she'd known a lot of law students when she was going to Berklee. Some built major practices in the city. Some occasionally stayed in touch. Unfortunately, none were criminal attorneys.

"Maybe he could recommend someone." Isaac put his other hand on her shoulder and leaned into her back.

"Maybe
she
could," Nina responded. "But what are you going to do for money?"

He said nothing and let go of her shoulders.

"Hand me that foil, please." Nina gestured toward the refrigerator top with a paring knife. She wrapped a couple of homemade shortcakes in foil, then put a quart of strawberries she'd bought at the farmer's market that morning in a plastic bag. Two loin lamb chops left from the night's dinner went in too. Isaac had told her he liked lamb and she'd bought six on sale months ago. She offered him the bag. "For Devon."

Isaac ignored it and searched her face.

Nina didn't want to see a brother, who'd risen by straps attached to the thinnest air, get screwed. Realizing he was dazed, due in court seventy-two hours from now, and relying on the system's counsel to keep his record clean and career on track, had put her in Rescue Mama mode. But she'd just heard two hours of stupid and took off the cape.

She put her good food back in the refrigerator.

The kitchen space was cramped. Standing-room only. Nina was a few inches shy of Isaac's five-ten. She crossed her arms and her elbow brushed his shirt front. "This woman's after your neck. Why?" Fill in the blanks, she told him. "How you better than Triple-A? You don't even own a car?"

"She knew I had Devon's ride."

"That's not his car."

"It's his car whenever he wants it," Isaac told her. Every syllable dripped smug, making Nina pause.

Sindi had called him around 3 in the morning back in March.

"She was stranded out in Newton," Isaac said.

"That time of night? How come?"

He said she'd been coming back from Wellesley.

"The college?"

He nodded. "The transmission gave out."

"And Marine to the rescue?"

"I get there and she picks a fight."

"About?"

"Bullshit."

"Yeah, that's what I say."

"I'm telling you. It was about
nuth-in,"
he insisted. "She's all up in my face and I push her away. She starts swinging at me. I grab her wrists and push her back. The shit is crazy so I leave her there."

"That's it?"

"She tells the cops I assaulted her."

"You put your hands on her. That's all it takes."

He froze for a few seconds, then mumbled, "Am I that kind of man?"

Nina tried to read him. "This chick apparently sets you up and you're seriously pondering the nature of your soul?"

"She likes that," Isaac said, the drugged gaze fading.

"Likes what?"

"Being slapped around."

Nina let that hang a moment.

"She wanted me to smack her around in bed."

"Did you?"

"That is so against my spirit," he said, slowly.

Nina considered his words, his tone. Then: "What about the polygamy thing? Girlfriend down with that?" When they first met, Isaac had told Nina that he planned to move to South Africa to teach and live with multiple wives. Nina had laughed it off and said, "You must want some serious voodoo on your ass."

He shrugged now.

"That's not an answer."

"Kind of," he said.

"As long as she's Wife Number One and you beat the crap out her daily? Nig-grow,
please
." She started putting together another container of strawberries for later. She felt her sweet tooth calling.

Isaac moved toward the front door to put on his shoes.

Nina walked and talked. Fruit in one hand, paring knife in the other. "Is anything I know about you true?"

He bent to tie his shoelace. Nina hovered.

"What are you talking about?" He was holding up the wall with his shoulder and looked exhausted from the effort.

"Maybe you're that brother from another planet," cause she didn't know any brothers from the 'hood who talked to the police without a lawyer.

They had called him, he repeated. They'd asked if he wanted to clear things up. "I felt it could easily be resolved. This woman is my best friend. We're used to talking a dozen times a day."

"You broke up and still talked a dozen times a day?"

"Yeah."

"But she was cool with you not fucking her anymore, and you believed that?"

Nina started remembering threads of their early conversations last fall. Calling himself a free agent. Admitting, only when Nina pressed, that he did see one sister more than anyone else...

...and that Isaac had been in her car when an old boyfriend called to apologize for ancient misdeeds. It was one of those twelve-step-make-amends things. Isaac had said he thought that was nice. She'd agreed. "Especially since I stabbed him."

"She's my best friend," Isaac repeated.

Nina batted the air and a bit of forgotten strawberry flew. She needed to wash the smashed fruit off her hand. "Say goodnight, Gracie," she muttered, walking back to the kitchen.

"What?"

"Way before your time."

"Thanks for dinner," he called out from the doorway.

She ignored the lame farewell and wiped the fruit off the floor. The downstairs door slammed shut.

The night was cool and windy. Nina raised the slats of a shutter and watched Isaac disappear in the dark. It was a ten-minute walk to Dudley Station, past some very sketchy territory. Nina had escaped Boston in the '80s, the years when crack was king and a Roxbury zip code meant perpetual violence. Before the plague, she'd traveled Interstate 90 from Albany to attend Berklee, and had lived at a series of Roxbury addresses with no problem. She loved the familiar swagger and grace amidst despair. Some of those blocks had crashed and resurrected. Some meant constant crossfire still. Her new address was safe in the daytime, but a game try at night without klieg-light battalions. Nina wouldn't hazard a night stroll. But a Marine might make it.

It was past 11:00. Too late to take that second pill. The mood elevator needed to drop a few floors. Nina made a three-bag cup of Sleepytime tea and spiked it with thirty drops of valerian root. Better than Xanax and safer. She stuck a straw in the thermos mug she kept in the crib--the other stayed in the car--and popped a white noise CD in the boom box. Waves crashed. Seagulls cried. She logged on and sent an e-mail to Darcelle, the judge. Nina gave her the short of it, then wrote:

She stopped typing, grabbed a large pink Post-it, and scribbled a note to herself:
Legal name? Isaac Elimu Sayif?
She circled it, then wrote,
AKA?
She started typing again.

Nina had received a
Welcome back
message from Darcelle last month. An invitation too: the judge's annual Fourth of July Louis Armstrong Birthday Bash. Nina had been happy to get it but surprised. She certainly hadn't announced her return to Boston. She'd worked the East Coast as a jazz singer and the world as a backup singer all through the '80s. But touring wore her out. Lost too many friends to drugs. And she'd deliberately been under the radar for a decade. Teaching mostly. Private piano lessons. Music theory and history courses at assorted colleges. She'd just finished teaching a jazz history course at Roxbury Community College. But she got the biggest rush teaching music to disabled kids in the public schools. That had brought her back to Berklee. She was studying music therapy.

She wiggled deep into the feather body pillow on the futon and settled on her side, hands in prayer position between her drawn knees. "East St. Louis," she said out loud. What part of East St. Louis don't know not to talk to a cop? A seagull cried. "That's what I'm talking about," she told the bird. "Ain't he never seen
Law & Order
?" The woman who adopted him used to be crazy with the electric cord on his ass, Isaac had told her. "She bang your head up too, baby? That the problem?"