Deep Pockets (17 page)

A fifteen-year-old son. Not legally old enough to drive, but fifteen-year-olds do drive. There would be an ex-husband, as well, although it seemed to me that any man would be grateful to Wilson Chaney for taking this peculiar woman off his hands. I’d known other women obsessed with making babies, having babies. I was seeing signs of it in my own baby, Paolina, and it scared me to death.

She said, “I would divorce him today if—”

“If?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. Of course I couldn’t leave him at a time like this, with people accusing him of something so vile. I wouldn’t desert him now.” She pulled a lace handkerchief off a small table and dried her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I don’t usually — You’re a good listener.” She made the compliment sound like an accusation. “Tell Wilson I’ll tell the police whatever he wants me to say.” She picked up her knitting and the needles slowly clicked to life.

“Mrs. Chaney, does your husband have any enemies? Anyone who might wish him harm?” Chaney’s lawyer, Todd Geary, considered Margo to be Chaney’s enemy; that suddenly seemed clear to me.

She pressed her lips together in a frozen smile. “Well of course he has enemies, dear. He’s a full professor at Harvard. Do you have any idea how many people envy that, how many want his job? Everything Wilson does is measured and tested and ranked. Is he smart enough? Is he published in the right journals? And then there’s extra pressure because he’s black. I’m tested and ranked, too; don’t think I don’t know it. I used to entertain the right people, try to make things easier for him, but now — I don’t even know the younger people in his department. If you want to know who’s sharpening their knives for Wilson, you’d have to ask Fording or someone else on the spot.”

“Who?”

“George Fording, Wilson’s department head. He would do anything to help Wilson. I’m sure he would.”

Was this the same department head Chaney’d described, the one who’d cheerfully toss him to the wolves?

“Do you think he’d see me?”

“Certainly. George would do anything for me. Would you like me to call and pave the way?”

When I nodded, she summoned Mark and asked him to fetch a telephone. I wondered whether she ever moved, whether prolonged lounging was in some way connected to increased fertility, what she did with all her baby knitting. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t see her following her husband, stalking him, running anyone down with the van. Too much energy required.

She barely seemed to notice when I left. Mark ushered me to the gate.

“I assume you’re not related to the Chaneys,” I said.

That drew another flush. “I’m her secretary.”

“How long have you worked for her?”

“Long enough to know she wouldn’t want me answering questions.”

“Do you like your job?”

“It’s better than washing up after the chosen ones in the dining halls, thanks.”

He shut the gate behind me, and I walked in the shade of the elm trees, heading toward my car. If Chaney was right, if he
was
being set up, I didn’t have much time. If someone wanted Chaney to take the blame, the telephone witness would show up with a dead-on description of Chaney. Or an anonymous note would tell the cops some tasty morsel Chaney had neglected to tell me. I wondered if all of Chaney’s love letters to Denali Brinkman were safe and accounted for in the plastic bag stashed under my cat’s business.

I used my cell phone to call my message machine. Garnowski sounded drunk, but he’d come through with an address for Freddie Church. If Church was home, I could fit him in before my appointment with George Fording.

If this had been the movies, Freddie Church
would have lived in Allston, within walking distance of the Birmingham Parkway. He didn’t; he lived in an apartment complex off LaGrange Street in West Roxbury.

It was maybe a half hour’s drive, but I didn’t bother with a phone call. If he wasn’t home, I’d visit his neighbors, inquire about his recent visitors. I stopped by the house and grabbed a photo of Benjy Dowling to flash. It wasn’t a great one. Roz had done her best in the basement darkroom, but the rain had been heavy the night of the payoff. Still, the features were recognizable. Dowling had thick eyebrows and deep-set eyes over a well-shaped nose. A good-looking man. I stuck the photo in my backpack and drove, wishing I’d asked Garnowski more about this Freddie Church. Was he the kind of guy, unlike Benjy, who’d head up a criminal enterprise, an idea man, a leader?

There’s no quick route from Cambridge to West Roxbury. I took cabbie shortcuts, turning every few blocks, twisting my way through the back streets of Allston-Brighton and Brookline in sporadic traffic, sitting almost two minutes behind some driver too chicken to enter a busy Brookline rotary.

I crossed the VFW Parkway, turned right off LaGrange, then right again into a rutted alley. I didn’t see any visitor parking, so I took a numbered resident-only slot. There must have been a hundred apartments in the complex, but no visible inhabitants. It looked like the sort of place where you didn’t want to hang around outside, an isolated clutch of yellow brick buildings, half still under construction and half already falling apart. On my left was a sorry playground, a barred basketball court with steel nets, another dusty gravel parking lot. It wasn’t exactly a project, but it had the air of a place with plenty of subidized Section 8 housing. Kids in school, Mom drunk or sleeping it off, Dad bagging groceries or living elsewhere. It looked a lot like a prison, so Church probably felt right at home.

I removed my suit jacket and folded it neatly on the passenger seat. Visiting a place like this, I would have been better off in jeans or sweats, maybe a splatter suit.

Church’s apartment, 5G, was a “garden” flat, meaning it was almost entirely underground, a habitable basement. I eyed the narrow windows. Barely visible behind straggly shrubs, they’d provide all the natural light he got.

Jail security had it all over Church’s apartment complex’s security. His vestibule door was heavy, steel-reinforced, and had a good lock to boot, but, like most of the other doors, it was propped open with a wooden board. Easier for construction crews to gain access; easier for thieves, too. It enabled me to walk right up to Church’s apartment without sounding a warning bell. I could hear the TV blasting, a good sign somebody was home. I knocked, waited, then knocked again loudly.

“Yeah? Yeah? Hang on, for Chrissake.”

I knocked again.

The man who answered the door didn’t look like a crime titan, but who knows? He was in his thirties, skinny, bare-chested, and wore his wrinkled khakis low on his hips. His narrow face was covered with stubble and he smelled of booze and sweat. His eyes were pale gray, the whites veiny.

“Whatcha want? Quit yer banging. I gotta helluva headache. Bad enough the crews start work crack a fuckin’ dawn, ya gotta—” He stopped yapping and gave me a long look, registering my presence in much the same way parole officer Garnowski had. “Hey, lookit you, now. Ain’t you a big girl!”

Big
is a comparative term. I’m tall for a woman, yes. I’m not a heavyweight, but I’m not scrawny, either; no fashion-model famine victim, thank you. But if I’d been six inches shorter, I’d still have been big compared to Freddie Church. He was no more than five two, but he stood erect, a little rooster of a guy, with a hint of a Tennessee accent and bad teeth.

“Jake Garnowski sent me.” As I spoke, I stepped into his apartment and the smell hit me, a pungent mix of unwashed clothes, unwashed dishes, rancid food, spilled beer, and overflowing ashtrays. He could have used about a bushel of Margo Chaney’s rose-petal potpourri. Sometimes I think I quit being a cop because I couldn’t stand the stink.

“Hey, how ’bout a drink?” said the little man, a blast of liquor on his breath.

“Bet you started without me.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “Well, I know it’s early, but I’m havin’ myself a li’l wake here. Friend a mine died. Hit by a fuckin’ car.”

“Benjy.”

He brightened. “You know Benjy? My man Benjy? Hey, you and me’ll have a drink to him, then.”

“No, thanks. I just want to ask a few questions.”

“Don’t tell me you’re a cop. That would be too damned depressing.”

“I’m not a cop.”

He smiled like he’d put one over on me. “Hah, if you ain’t no cop, I don’t have to answer shit.” He waved a finger at my nose.

“Up to you,” I said. “Depends how much you want to go back to the can. Way I understand it, you’re on parole, Freddie, and unless my eyes are bad, you’ve got some serious weed sitting on your sofa. Probably your own personal stash, but your record, any prosecutor would go for distribution.”

He stared at the sofa, saw the Baggie plain as day. He tucked it under a cushion, marched back to the door, and made as if to hold it open. He was pretty well looped and having trouble walking. “Whyn’t you just leave? You’re pretty, but you gotta bad attitude.”

I smiled. “Hey, Freddie, you got a beer?”

“That’s better. That’s sociable.” He closed the door and staggered off into an alcove that passed for a kitchen because it had a hot plate and a refrigerator. Meanwhile, I investigated the Baggie under the sofa cushion. Damned if I could tell whether it came from the same mother lode as Dowling’s stash. Leroy probably could have.

Church came back with an open bottle of Michelob and a smudgy jelly glass. I wiped the lip of the bottle with my sleeve and drank from that. Seemed safer.

Church said, “You’re kiddin’ about the weed, right? I could just flush it, and how’d you prove it? You ain’t no cop.”

“So when was the last time you saw Benjy?”

He took awhile, trying to decide whether I was bluffing. The pint of store-brand whiskey on the battered coffee table was freshly opened and a third gone. Two roaches sat in an ashtray otherwise filled with cigarette butts. He took a seat on the sprung gray sofa and slugged from the bottle. “Hell, the man’s dead, right?”

“Yeah.” His brain was operating and he was asking himself why he should risk jail to protect a dead man.

“I used to see Benjy at meetings, AA and that shit, but we both quit going. I ain’t seen him more than three times this past year, and, man, we used to be tight.”

“You argue over anything?”

“Nah. It’s women. Women is what does it, gets in the way of men staying friends.”

“Your woman or his woman?”

“Does it look like I got a woman hid in here?”

He made an expansive gesture that took in the filthy room. If he had a woman, the gesture said, by God, he wouldn’t be living in a sty. Guys like that never seem to understand why women aren’t lining up to do their cleaning.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Do you?”

“Hah. Wished I did, hon. I’m talking ’bout Benjy’s babe. He never said nothing, but that’s what I figure. Babe like that, what’s she wanna hang out with me, classy little babe like that? Don’t want him hanging with lowlifes like me, either. Man, Benjy was always a lucky one with the broads, I tell you. You know what he had?”

“Nope.”

“You never met him?”

“Never had the pleasure.” I’d searched his apartment, but it wasn’t the same as a personal introduction.

“Confidence. Course he had a dong long’s a horse, too. That’s what gave him confidence. He wasn’t a big man, you know. Just hung, the way some of us small guys are.”

He gave me a look to make sure I knew what he was telling me. Two in as many days, Garnowski and now this runt. My cup runneth over.

“Jake a buddy a yours?” he asked. Do you sleep with Jake? was what he meant.

I said, “Probably you’ve got more than an ounce of dope in this dump, right?”

“Hey, hey, let’s keep it civil.”

“Let’s keep it professional, too, Freddie. I want to know what you had going with Benjy.”

“And I’m telling you. I ain’t even seen him lately.”

“I heard you were storing stuff for him.”

“Yeah, well that’s horse shit. Who tole you that?”

“Your pal had a lot of cash when he died.”

“Good for him.”

“How do you think he came by it?”

“Was he working something?”

“You tell me.”

“Well, if he was he was working it without me. I told him come to me he finds something, but once that girl got with him, he didn’t hang with me no more. You know her? You talk to her? She was a looker. Blond hair, looked real and all.”

“Where did you meet her?”

“Some bar, one of them places over on Harvard Street. Wished I could remember her name. Probably see her at Benjy’s funeral, you wanna talk to her.”

“About five two, little oval face, good body?”

“That’s the one.”

“She won’t be there. She died.”

He gave a soft grunt and placed the bottle carefully back on the coffee table, moving with the caution of a man who knows his sense of balance can’t be trusted. “Her and Benjy both? Jesus. When did she go?”

“In April.”

“Christ on a crutch, I didn’t know. Man, Benjy didn’t even call me or nuthin’. Girl had a funny name, like a hill.”

“Denali.”

“Yeah, yeah. You tellin’ me that pretty girl’s dead and gone?”

“Killed herself.”

“Whoa.” He grabbed for the bottle and took a long drink. “Go figure. You think that’s why Benjy was playing in traffic? Shit, I never thought a that. I mean, maybe he didn’t want to go on without her, you know?”

“I think Benjy was into something that got him killed.”

“You think he was offed?”

“Hit-and-run. I do.”

“Damn.”

“Who else did he hang with, Freddie?”

“Shit, lady, I dunno. I tole you I—”

“When you last saw him, what was he doing?”

“Lookin’ for work, like always.”

“What kind of work?”

“What kind — Hell, maybe he figured he’d try brain surgery, lady. You got a record, you take what you get. Benjy used to clean places. Me, I paint houses. Fuck, what time is it, anyway? What day?”

“Benjy ever take you out on the river?”

“Huh?”

“He was a rower, right?”

“Oh, yeah, he used to stay in shape on one of them machines up at Concord. Machine, boat, same shit, he says. But he liked it on the river. I got no use for it. I go to the gym, but the river, man, it stinks. You fall in, they gotta give you a shot.”