Jamaica Plain (9780738736396) (18 page)

“I know it's not a district priority. Sex crimes don't even register on city hall targets for JP. City hall wants to keep the figures down for volume crime. Rapes and attempts are around ten or eleven the last four months. Burglary and attempts about seventy. Larcenies almost three hundred. Robberies, fifty-eight. Vehicle theft, sixty-nine. Drugs don't even feature on the reported crime stats. Separate issue.”

He swiveled in his chair, rocking gently from left to right. “Prostitution? So long as it's off the street. Not a problem. There are still offenses there, but it generally gets the BPD blind eye. Resources like they are, we can only do so much in a day.”

Grant nodded. “You can't fit a quart in a pint pot.”

“Thought you'd gone metric?”

“Same principal applies.”

“Basically, if it doesn't trouble city hall or the stats, it doesn't trouble us.”

“Must be a thriving business then.”

“It is. There are lap-dancing clubs all over the place, but the escort business is booming. Mostly online. Big money in that. Main man around here is a guy called Frank Delaney.”

The name bristled Grant's neck again. Mr. Delaney. This was the first time he'd got a first name, though. The owner of Flanagan's Bar and the Gentlemen's Club and employer of Freddy and Sean Sullivan. The kingpin in charge of Triple Zero Gentlemen's Services, with headquarters at One Post Office Square in the business district. “Delaney?”

“Yeah. Real nasty piece of work. Goes back a long way. You ever shake his hand, count your fingers. That was his speciality‚ cutting fingers off his rivals. Said it helped him recognize the opposition. Get this. He once had a run-in with a local butcher. Proper meat man—steak, lamb, best in the business. Come Thanksgiving, he used to donate pies to all the JP charities. Anyway. Delaney falls out with him. Has him cut down to a torso and hangs him in his own shop window on a meat hook. Gives a message to anyone thinking of standing against him.”

Grant whistled softly. Miller continued.

“Fingers in a lot of pies, most of them legitimate now. It's not like the Whitey Bulger days. There are more crooks at city hall than running the streets. We just deal with the dregs.”

“In shit valley. I remember.”

“He doesn't rob pizza deliveries or steal McDonald's cash registers.”

“So he gets a pass?”

Miller nodded and stopped swaying his chair. “On prostitution. Yes. The man's a philanthropist. You know what he does? Get this. He not only donates to the VA Hospital”—he leaned forward and rested his elbows on the desk, fingers interlocked—“he helps the war effort by supplying returning veterans with free sex and condoms. Help them get over the trauma. Do you believe that?”

Grant believed it. Her Majesty's government didn't supply anything like that when he mustered out of the forces. He doubted she'd be amused. But this was America, man. Entrepreneurs ruled. What he was thinking, though, was that it wasn't what you knew but who you knew to ask.

Grant reckoned he knew just the guy to ask.

twenty-five

John Cornejo's house
was
a traditional green-painted clapboard on Woodlawn Street. It had a porch, a yard, and the inevitable stars and stripes hanging above the steps. It was the smallest house on a tree-lined street that ran up the hill towards a dead end backing onto Forest Hills Cemetery, a more permanent dead end. The other houses were painted in shades of pale blue or pink, and all displayed Support Our Troops stickers in the windows. Most had a stars and stripes hanging somewhere out front, the brilliant red and white glowing in the afternoon sunshine.

The only house painted green was Cornejo's.

It was the condition of it that Grant hadn't expected.

The doorbell rang
somewhere
inside the house. Grant stepped back from the door and held his hand up against the American flag. Its folds moved gently in the breeze and caressed his fingers. There was something deeply moving about a country's national flag during times of war. Just looking at it brought home the pain and
sacrifice
being offered by men barely out of their teens. Feeling it brush against his fingers brought goose bumps out on the back of his neck.

Nobody answered the door.

Grant examined the front of the house. Considering the state Cornejo had been in when they'd first met and the obvious depression that had settled over the marine vet, Grant had expected a rundown shack on the edge of the cemetery. What stood before him was a beautifully appointed family home on a street that was filled with color and cleanliness.

Cornejo's house was no exception.

Grant pressed the doorbell again. He heard it deep inside the hallway. He could see through the lace-curtained window next to the front door but could only detect shadows and light. There was a staircase to the right. A telephone table at the bottom of the stairs. A closed door on the left. An open door at the end of the hall leading into a bright room. Probably the kitchen.

There was no movement.

If there was one thing Grant had learned during his military service, it was that men suffering from stress and depression seldom looked after themselves. An air of torpor hung over them that affected their general demeanor and cleanliness. It showed in their clothing, like the soiled T-shirt and scuffed boots Cornejo had been wearing on the T. It was also reflected in the places they lived. If you felt lethargic and unwanted, then keeping your house clean and tidy was not a priority. So Grant was surprised to find Cornejo's home looking pristine and shipshape.

He ignored the doorbell and knocked on the door. His copper's knock. The knock that let whoever was inside know that the police were calling. In Cornejo's case, Grant hoped it let him know the Resurrection Man was calling. That should diffuse the “Halt, who goes there” response. “Friend or foe?” Grant wanted Cornejo to know he was a friend.

He knocked again, louder this time. He was about to shout through the letterbox, but the clapboard house didn't have a letterbox. Letters were left in a mailbox on a stick beside the sidewalk. He leaned close to the door and raised his voice.

“Come on, John. Stick the kettle on. It's your shout.”

There was still no movement in the house. Grant tried the door handle. That usually worked in the movies. He half expected the door to creak open, leading him to find a dark secret inside. Just like the message written on the matchbook flap, that didn't work in real life either. The door was locked.

“John.”

No response. He wished he'd checked before coming out here whether the ex-marine lived with his parents or alone. A wife perhaps? Although he didn't think that was the case. He hadn't got a married vibe from him the other night on the T, nor at the CVS Pharmacy after. The fact that Cornejo used the T meant there would be no car parked outside, so there was nothing to indicate if he was home or not. He glanced up at the windows. They were all closed. He was about to go around the side of the house when the door unlatched and swung inwards. Grant hadn't even seen Cornejo come along the hallway, but there he stood.

“What's shouting got to do with anything?”

“Sorry. Didn't mean to shout.”

“No. ‘It's your shout.' What's that?”

“Your turn. I made the last coffee.”

“Thought you'd prefer tea. That's what the allies drink, isn't it?”

“So long as it's hot and wet. The British Army motto.”

Cornejo stood in the doorway but didn't invite Grant in. There was an awkward silence. Cold calling on a witness canvas often produced that. People who weren't expecting the police having to rapidly adjust to the invasion of privacy. That went double for ex-military trying to put their pasts behind them and being reminded of it by visiting forces. Grant understood. Tact and diplomacy were needed. They weren't Grant's strengths as a copper.

“Forgotten how to extend the hand of friendship to a fellow soldier?”

“Thought you were a typist?”

“An army typist. Trained to kill with a cutting phrase.”

Cornejo still didn't move aside.

Grant held up a black matchbook with the flame and silhouette logo. “You need any more of these?”

Cornejo glanced at the condom packet, then back at Grant. He didn't speak. After a few moments he stepped aside and waved Grant inside.

They sat
in the
living room nursing a mug of coffee each. Grant's was milky with two sugars, evidence that he didn't really like coffee but suffered it as the easiest drink to make. Americans didn't know how to make a decent cup of tea anyway. Cornejo's coffee was black, no sugar, evidence of the dark place he found himself in with nothing to sweeten his life outside the brotherhood of the corps.

The living room screamed “family home.” There was a sensible three-piece suite. There was a glass trophy display cabinet with assorted ornaments and miniature Lilliput Lane cottages from the UK. A standard TV stood in one corner with a VHS recorder underneath. A pendulum clock hung on the wall beside the door. The room smelled of air freshener. All very clean and tidy. There was no clutter. Nothing to suggest this was a bachelor pad. This had mother and father written all over it.

That made the omissions all the more pointed.

There were no framed photographs on the fireplace or trophy cabinet. There were none hanging on the walls. Proud parents always had photos of their children in uniform. There were always family group shots and father and son shots and pictures of grandma and granddad. Nieces and nephews. Cousins. Grant noticed the patches of wallpaper that were less faded than the rest. Square patches and rectangular patches. Three oval patches. Photographs that were missing, and not recently either. The nails had been removed long ago, leaving no sign of where the pictures had hung apart from the ghostly shapes on the wall.

There were no trophies in the trophy cabinet—something else that parents with a military background would have proudly displayed. Their son's first baseball. His high-school football trophies. Any other proof of his success growing up. Grant was certain Cornejo had been successful. You didn't end up in the US Marine Corps if you were a failure.

There was no evidence of Cornejo's family life at all. And yet the house was a shrine to his parents. Everything about the living room was as it had been when they were here. It was a living reminder of better times. Because Grant knew they had passed on. That was obvious too. The parents who had raised him and the corps that had nurtured him. All evidence of them removed. Cornejo was more depressed than Grant had thought.

Grant didn't ask about them. He decided on a different tack. He put the condom matchbook on the coffee table and flicked it across to Cornejo. The marine corps veteran looked at it, then took a sip of his coffee. “Am I supposed to feel embarrassed?”

“Hell no. Wish the army had given me a leg up when I came out.”

“It isn't a leg up they're providing.”

“Leg over then. Whatever. Forward thinking is what it is.”

“It helps.”

“I bet it does. Make love, not war. My mind's never clearer than at the point of
pffft
,
pffft
,
bing
.”

Cornejo almost smiled. “There is a theory that if all men were satisfied in bed, they'd be too happy to go making war on their neighbors.”

Grant nodded but added a caveat. “Providing the neighbors didn't have more oil or water or food than them.”

“There is that too, yes.” Cornejo flicked the matchbook back across the table. “So, what's the problem?”

“At this level. No problem. What bothers me is this.”

Grant gave Cornejo the edited version of his adventures in Boston so far. The reason he was here to interview Freddy Sullivan. What Sullivan said just before he died. The brother's suggestion that Grant watch his back. Then the revelation that Sullivan was importing women for Triple Zero's sex services and the fact that Frank Delaney's name kept cropping up wherever Grant turned. Including providing relief for returning servicemen. “An admirable quality. But you don't get owt for nowt.”

“Translation?”

“Anything for nothing.”

“You're gonna really struggle if you don't learn proper English.”

Grant indicated the empty walls. “Struggling seems to be what you're doing.”

“Surviving is what I'm doing.”

“Surviving isn't all it's cracked up to be. Living's what you should be doing.”

“Listen to Sigmund fuckin' Freud over there.”

Grant put his cup on the table. “Let's cut the crap, John. Delaney's up to no good. I just want to know what was so important he'd have Freddy whacked and risk setting the entire BPD on his tail.”

“How the fuck should I know? Go ask him.”

The burst of anger evaporated as quickly as it materialized. Cornejo seemed to realize he was in his mother's living room and his cheeks colored slightly. Swearing in front of your mother was unforgivable.

“I just know this was arranged through medical services. At the VA.”

“You've heard of Delaney, though?”

Cornejo leaned back in his chair. “This is JP. Everyone knows about Delaney. It's like Whitey Bulger in the Southie Projects. He's a legend. Just not like Robin Hood.”

“He's a crook, you're saying?”

“He hasn't invaded as many countries as our crooks.”

“Scale isn't the issue. Legality is.”

“Then yes. He's a crook. Nothing they've been able to pin on him, though.”

Grant leaned back too, crossing one leg lazily over the other. He let out a sigh and let his eyes wander over the walls again. Then he focused on Cornejo's upper arm, where the patch was just visible below the T-shirt sleeve. Tact and diplomacy. Or simply sliding in from the blindside. The blindside, in this case, was Cornejo's love of his family and the corps.

“Covering the tattoo.” Grant indicated the empty walls. “And removing your family. You can't hide from what you've done.”

Cornejo didn't speak.

Grant uncrossed his legs and leaned forward in his chair. “You want to talk about it?”

“Sigmund Grant?”

“Somebody who's been there.”

Cornejo sat completely still. Even his head didn't move as he spoke. “You want to talk about what you've done?”

“No.”

“Or where you've served?”

“No.”

“There's your answer, then.”

“I've moved on. You haven't.”

“Because you're a cop? Doing something useful again?”

“Because I've learned to live with what I've done.”

“Good for you.”

“And I'm not hiding what I used to be.”

“I told you. I'm not hiding from it. Just protecting them from having to see what I've become.”

“Now who's Sigmund Freud?”

They sat in silence for a few moments. The pause stretched into an awkward stalemate. Grant could see it working on Cornejo and waited just long enough to let him think. Then he played his ace. “I need your help.”

Cornejo held his breath, his face impassive. Grant lowered his voice.

“How about we go stir the pot a bit?”