Gone, Baby, Gone (13 page)

So Charlestown is an easy place to get confused. Signs bearing street names disappear all the time, and the houses are often stacked so close together they conceal small alleys that lead to other homes behind. The streets that climb the hill are apt to dead-end or else force the driver to turn in the opposite direction from where he was headed.

The sections of Charlestown change character with bewildering speed as well. Depending on which direction one is heading, the Mishawum Housing Project can give way to the gentrified brownstones surrounding Edwards Park in a horseshoe; the roads passing through the grandeur of the red-brick and white-trim colonial town houses fronting Monument Square drop without warning or respect for gravity into the dark gray of Bunker Hill Project, one of the most poverty-stricken white housing developments this side of West Virginia.

But speckled throughout it all, one finds a sense of history—of brick and mortar, colonial clapboard and cobblestone, pre-Revolutionary taverns and post-Treaty of Versailles sailors quarters—that’s hard to duplicate in most of America.

Still sucks to drive through, though.

Which is what we’d been doing for the last hour, following Poole and Broussard, accompanied by Helene in the backseat of their Taurus, up and over and around and across Charlestown. We’d crisscrossed the hill, loped around the back of both housing projects, jerked bumper-to-bumper through the yuppie enclaves up by the Bunker Hill Monument and down at the base of Warren Street. We’d driven along the docks, rolled past Old Ironsides and the naval quarters and once-dingy warehouses and tanker-repair hangars converted into pricey condos, rumbled along the cracked roads that skirted the burned-out shells of long-forgotten fisheries at the edge of the land mass, where more than one wise guy had gazed at his final vista of moonlight bathing the Mystic River as a bullet cracked through a breech and into his head.

We’d tailed the Taurus along Main Street and Rutherford Avenue, followed the hill up to High Street and down to Bunker Hill Avenue and beyond to Medford Street, and we’d cased every tiny street in between, idling at the alleys that appeared suddenly out of the corners of our eyes. Looking for a car on blocks. Looking for two hundred grand. Looking for Garfield.

“Sooner or later,” Angie said, “we’re going to run out of gas.”

“Or patience,” I said, as Helene pointed at something through the Taurus window.

I applied the brakes, and once again the Taurus stopped ahead of us, and Broussard got out with Helene and they walked over to an alley and stared in. Broussard asked her something and Helene shook her head and they walked back to the car and I took my foot off the brake.

“Why are we looking for the money again?” Angie asked a few minutes later as we dropped over the other side of the hill and the hood of our Crown Victoria pointed straight down and the brakes clacked and the pedal jumped against my foot.

I shrugged. “Maybe because,
A
, this is the closest lead there’s been in a while to anything and,
B
, maybe Broussard and Poole figure it’s a drug-related kidnapping now.”

“So where’s the ransom demand? How come Chris Mullen or Cheese Olamon or one of their boys hasn’t contacted Helene yet?”

“Maybe they’re waiting for her to figure it out.”

“That’s expecting a lot from someone like Helene.”

“Chris and Cheese ain’t rocket scientists.”

“True, but—”

We’d stopped again, and this time Helene was out of the car before Broussard, gesturing maniacally at a construction Dumpster on the sidewalk. The construction crew working on the house across the street was nowhere to be seen; I knew they were somewhere nearby, though, if only for the scaffolding erected against the building facade.

I pressed down the emergency brake and stepped out of the car, and pretty soon I saw why Helene was so excited. The Dumpster, five feet tall and four feet wide, had obscured the alley behind it. There in the alley sat a late-seventies Grand Torino, up on blocks, one fat orange cat attached by suction cups to the rear window, paws spread wide, smiling like an idiot through the dirty glass.

It was impossible to double-park on the street without blocking it entirely, so we spent another five minutes finding parking spaces back up the hill on Bartlett Street. Then the five of us walked back toward the alley. The construction crew had returned in the interim and milled around the scaffolding with their coolers and liters of Mountain Dew. They whistled at Helene and Angie as we walked down the hill.

Poole saluted one of them as we neared the alley, and the man quickly looked away.

“Mr. Fred Griffin,” Poole said. “Still have a taste for the amphetamines?”

Fred Griffin shook his head.

“Apologize,” Poole said in that threatening singsong of his, as he turned into the alley.

Fred cleared his throat. “Sorry, ladies.”

Helene flipped him the bird and the rest of the construction crew hooted.

Angie nudged me as we lagged behind the other three. “You get the feeling Poole’s a bit tightly wound behind that big smile?”

“Personally,” I said, “I wouldn’t fuck with him. But I’m a wuss.”

“That’s our secret, babe.” She patted my ass as we turned into the alley, which drew another round of hoots from across the street.

The Gran Torino hadn’t been used in a while. Helene was right about that. Chips of rust and sallow beige spots stained the cinder blocks under the wheels. The windows had accumulated so much dust it was a wonder we’d been able to discern Garfield in the first place. A newspaper that bore a headline detailing Princess Diana’s peace mission to Bosnia lay on the dashboard.

The alley was cobblestone, cracked in places, shattered in others, to reveal a pink-gray earth beneath. Two plastic trash cans spilled garbage beneath a cobwebbed gas meter. The alley cut so narrowly between two three-deckers, I was surprised they’d been able to fit the car in.

At the end of the alley, about ten yards off the street, sat a single-story box of a house, dating back to the forties or fifties, from the unimaginative look of the construction. It could have been the foreman’s shack on a construction site or a small radio station, and probably wouldn’t have stood out quite so much if it were in a less architecturally rich neighborhood, but even so it was an eyesore. There were no steps, just a crooked door raised about an inch off the foundation, and the wood shingles were covered in black tarpaper, as if someone had once considered aluminum siding but then quit before the delivery was made.

“You remember the names of the occupants?” Poole asked Helene, as he unsnapped his holster strap with a flick of his thumb.

“No.”

“’Course not,” Broussard said, his eyes scanning the four windows fronting the alley, the grimy plastic shades pulled down to their sills. “You said there were two?”

“Yeah. A guy and his girlfriend.” Helene looked up and around at the three-deckers casting their shadows over us.

A window behind us shot open, and we spun toward the sound.

“Jesus Christ,” Helene said.

A woman in her late fifties stuck her head out a second-story window and peered down at us. She held a wooden spoon in one hand, and a strand of linguine fell off the edge and dropped to the alley.

“You the animal people?”

“Ma’am?” Poole squinted up at her.

“The SPCA,” she said and waggled the wooden spoon. “You with them?”

“All five of us?” Angie said.

“I been calling,” the woman said. “I been calling.”

“Pertaining to what?” I asked.

“Pertaining to those friggin’ cats, smart-ass, that’s what. I gotta listen to my grandson Jeffrey whining in one ear and my husband bitching in the other. I look like I got a third ear at the back of my head to listen to those friggin’ cats?”

“No, ma’am,” Poole said. “No third ear I can see.”

Broussard cleared his throat. “Of course, we can only see your front from here, ma’am.”

Angie coughed into her fist and Poole dropped his head, looked at his shoes.

The woman said, “You’re cops. I can tell.”

“What gave it away?” Broussard asked.

“The lack of respect for working people.” The woman slammed the window back down so hard the panes shook.

“We can only see your front.” Poole chuckled.

“You like that?” Broussard turned to the door of the small house and knocked.

I looked in the overstuffed trash cans by the gas meter, saw at least ten small tins of cat food.

Broussard knocked again. “I respect working people,” he said to no one in particular.

“Most times,” Poole agreed.

I looked over at Helene. Why hadn’t Poole and Broussard left her in the car?

Broussard knocked a third time, and a cat yowled from inside.

Broussard stepped back from the door. “Miss McCready?”

“Yeah.”

He pointed at the door. “Would you be so kind as to turn the doorknob?”

Helene gave him a look but did so, and the door opened inward.

Broussard smiled at her. “And would you take one step inside?”

Again, Helene did so.

“Excellent,” Poole said. “See anything?”

She looked back at us. “It’s dark. Smells funny, though.”

Broussard said as he jotted in his notebook, “Citizen stated premises smelled abnormal.” He capped his pen. “Okay. You can come out, Miss McCready.”

Angie and I looked at each other, shook our heads. You had to hand it to Poole and Broussard. By getting Helene to open the door and step in first, they’d avoided the need for a warrant. “Abnormal smell” was good enough for probable cause, and once Helene had opened the door, just about anyone could legally enter.

Helene stepped out onto the cobblestones and looked back up at the window where the woman had complained about the cats.

One of them—an emaciated orange tabby with sharply defined ribs—shot past Broussard and then around me, leaped into the air, landed atop one of the trash cans, and dove its head into the collection of tins I’d seen.

“Guys,” I said.

Poole and Broussard turned from the doorway.

“The cat’s paws. There’s dried blood on them.”

“Oh, gross,” Helene said.

Broussard pointed at her. “You stay here. Don’t move until we call for you.”

She fished in her pockets for her cigarettes. “You don’t have to tell me twice.”

Poole stuck his head in the doorway and sniffed. He turned back to Broussard, frowned, and nodded at the same time.

Angie and I came up beside them.

“Bloaters,” Broussard said. “Anyone got cologne or perfume?”

Angie and I shook our heads. Poole produced a small vial of Aramis from his pocket. Until then, I hadn’t known they still manufactured it.

“Aramis?” I said. “What, they were out of Brut?”

Poole raised his eyebrows up and down several times. “Old Spice, too, unfortunately.”

He passed the bottle around, and we each applied it liberally to our upper lips. Angie doused a handkerchief with it as well. Nasty as it smelled as it scorched the insides of my nostrils, it was still preferable to smelling a bloater without anything at all.

Bloaters are what some cops, paramedics, and doctors call bodies that have been dead for a while. Once the body’s gases and acids have been allowed to run rampant after rigor mortis, the body will bloat and balloon and do all sorts of other really appetizing things.

A porch the width of my car greeted us. Winter boots caked with dried salt sat stuck to last February’s newspapers beside a spade with gashes in the wood handle, a rusted hibachi, and a bag of empty beer cans. The thin green rug was ripped apart in several places, and the bloody footprints of several cats had dried into the fabric.

The next room we entered was a living room, and light from the windows was joined by the silver shaft from a TV with the volume turned down. The inside of the house was dark, but gray light came in from the side windows, filling the rooms with a pewter haze that didn’t do much to improve the squalid surroundings. The rugs on the floors were a mismatched shag, patched together with a drug addict’s sense of aesthetics. In several places, you could see the tufts rising in ridges where the sections had been cut and placed side by side. The walls were paneled in blond plywood, and the ceilings flaked white paint. A shredded futon couch sat against the wall, and as we stood in the center of the room, our eyes adjusting to the gray light, I noticed several sets of sparkling eyes brighten from the torn fabric.

A soft electric hum, like cicadas buzzing around a generator, rolled out from the futon, and the several sets of eyes moved in a jagged line.

And then they attacked.

Or at least it seemed that way at first. A dozen high-pitched meows preceded a scratch-and-scramble exodus as the cats—Siamese and calicoes and tabbies and one Hemingway—shot off the couch and over the coffee table, hit the shag carpet sections, burst through our legs, and banged off the baseboards on their way toward the door.

Poole said, “Mother of God,” and hopped up on one leg.

I flattened against the cheap wall, and Angie joined me, and a hunk of thick fur slithered over my foot.

Broussard jerked to his right and then left, whacked at the hem of his suit jacket.

The cats weren’t after us, though. They were after sunlight.

Outside, Helene shrieked as they poured through the open doorway. “Holy shit! Help!”

“What I tell ya?” A voice I recognized as the middle-aged lady’s yelled. “A blight. A goddamned blight on the city a’ Charlestown!”

Inside the house, it was suddenly so quiet I could hear the tick of a clock coming from the kitchen.

“Cats,” Poole said with thick disdain, and wiped his brow with a handkerchief.

Broussard bent to check his pant cuffs, dusted a wisp of cat hair off his shoes.

“Cats are smart.” Angie came off the wall. “Better than dogs.”

“Dogs get the paper for you, though,” I said.

“Dogs don’t scratch the shit out of couches, either,” Broussard said.

“Dogs don’t eat their owners’ corpses when they’re hungry,” Poole said. “Cats do.”

“Ugh,” Angie managed. “That’s not true. Is it?”