Old School Bones (13 page)

HE’S never been so glad to be out of anywhere as he is now to be out of that hospital after three days. Never so glad to be driving his jeep, even bent and dented from the plunge into the woods. Never so glad to be back in Nu Bej this fresh March morning. The air over the harbor crystallizing his breath into little clouds that shimmer in the sunlight. Laughing gulls wheeling in flocks through the sky.

The
Rosa Lee’s
the only trawler at the fish buyer’s wharf, first boat home from the banks with a trip of fish in her hold. She’s just back late last night.

When he enters the wheelhouse, he sees his father, lying on his back in the berth at the back of the building. Snoring.

He grabs the big toe on Caesar Decastro’s foot, poking out of the rotting white sock.

“Huh?” His father cocks open one eye, sits up. “What?”

“It’s me, Mo, Dad.”

“Cristo,
what the hell happened to you?” The fisherman rubs his eyes with his fists, takes in the red scars, scabs, stitches on his son’s cheek. The wrist cast.

“I think I’ve gotten in way over my head.”

“In what, a fucking meat grinder?” His black eyes suddenly pop wide open, shoot rods of intensity through the hazy morning air. More questions. The hooded Celtics sweatshirt and jeans give him an urban look. Longish, graying hair pokes out around the edge of the hood.

“So???”

“So what?”

“You OK?”

“I wrecked my jeep.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“But that’s not why you’re waking me from my dreams of glory. My god, I thought I was a boy again, your mother the fairest Portagee princess in all of … Jesus.”

“I think someone tried to run me off the road. Some guy in a white truck.”

“On purpose?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Damn, Mo …! Where?”

“Tolchester.”

The older man rubs his jaw, stares out through the windows at the harbor. He grabs a pack of Merits from the pouch in his sweatshirt, taps out a cigarette, lights it with his Zippo. His hand is a little shaky.

“Dad?”

Caesar Decastro gets to his feet. Moves across the wheelhouse to one of the two swiveling captain’s chairs that look out over the bows.” Take a load off.”

Michael drops into the other chair.” I’m all screwed up.”

“So it appears … Shit, Mo!”

“What?”

His father takes a long drag, squints at his son. “Look, you want to square things up with me? Is this about that Indian honey?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on, dog. Be real!”

“Don’t be like that. Look at me, Dad. I need your help right now.”

“I swear to
Cristo,
I told you this would come to no good. I practically begged you to come back out fishing with me and Tommy. Stay the hell away from that lawyer business. It messes you up. You can’t go near the law without some kind of Clark Kent thing kicking in.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Clark Kent—as in Superman.”

“Yeah, I get it, Dad, OK? But so—”

“So enough with trying to rescue all these Lois Lane types. You want to get yourself killed?”

“Huh?”

“How come you feel like you need to save every weepy woman?”

He squeezes his eyes shut. “I’m really in trouble!”

“You want to talk about this prep school stuff you’ve gotten mixed up with in Boston? Or maybe about Vietnam again? You want me to tell you how my romance with Meng almost got me killed over there? How a hard-on is like a time bomb?”

Something seems to smack him between the shoulder blades. Drive right through his lungs. He chokes. “No.”

“You want me to remind you how that murder case you had with your half-black, half-Vietnamese drag queen client out in Provincetown destroyed your engagement to Filipa? And turned you into this ghost of the son I used to have?”

“No! Damn it, Dad. Help me out. Please. Something’s really tearing me up. I feel like I’m being crushed in a vice, and there’s no way out. And don’t tell me all I need is to go fishing. Get out to sea. I’ve tried that.”

“You telling me fishing isn’t the answer?”

“I love it. And I used to think it was magic for me. But right now it just feels like another way to run from shit.”

“What’s wrong with that? Jesus, Mo, someone may still be trying to kill you. Get the fuck out of Dodge City!”

“I don’t think I can.”

“Why the hell not?”

“I have this sick feeling Dodge City’s inside of me. How do I sort that out?”

Outside, a breeze whines through the fishing gallows, the outriggers, the nets.

“When you were a kid, and you had girl problems, you used to take long walks on a windy beach.”

“You think that works when the girl is dead?”

DENISE Pasteur’s face seems even more angular than usual, cheeks almost gaunt. Lips thin, less glossy. Her bobbed platinum hair whiter as she closes the door behind her for privacy.

“People are talking.”

“Excuse me?” She can’t believe what she’s hearing, kicks back from her desk, spins in her swivel chair to face the dean. The chair screeching as she spins.

“About you and Gracie in the steam room.”

“We could have died in there!”

“Well, since you kicked out the glass door, hit the panic button and brought the cops on campus, everybody at T-C is going to know about your little interlude by the time they get back from spring break.”

“I don’t believe this! A chair was wedged against the door from the outside so that it wouldn’t open. We were stuck. Somebody wanted us to bake to death in there. And you’re worried about people talking?”

“Don’t be so dramatic. No doubt it was an accident. The custodian was cleaning up, moved a chair, didn’t know you were in there.”

“I didn’t call the police.” The words boil out of her throat.

“Somebody did. And now the police and the media are going to be all over this. You wait and see.”

“Please. Why are you doing this. I thought you were my …”

The dean walks to a bookshelf, picks up the Wampanoag medicine stick carved from the rib of a pilot whale, pretends to examine it.

“Put that down.”

“What?”

“Leave my medicine stick alone.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah, Jesus … Maybe you better leave.”

Denise Pasteur shoots her a look like you-must-be-kidding, still holds the medicine stick, taps it in her free hand.

“Please. Stop. Put down my stick. Go. Just go. Before I say something I wish I—”

“I’m serious. Think about it, Awasha. Think about how it looks. A teacher found alone with her female student in the women faculty’s steam room. You were only wearing bath towels. Can you imagine the fit Bumbledork is about to throw at you? At us? Fuck!”

She jumps to her feet. “Us?”

“Us. You think you are the only one under the microscope around here?”

“I don’t understand you.”

“Damn it. You’re smart. You ever listen to Bumbledork talk about women? It’s right there under his patronizing tone of voice.”

“What?”

“He thinks we’re all psycho vampire Amazon dykes. You know he’s watching our every move. We threaten his fragile sense of male superiority. He tolerates us because his job depends upon his appearing open-minded and inclusive. He has a mandate from the board to be PC. But he would like nothing better than to see us shame ourselves with a really ugly—”

“A girl’s been murdered here. Liberty Baker’s dead. There’s a body in the attic of Hibernia House. And we’re talking about … about perceptions? Perceptions?! What’s gotten into you? Why don’t you say what’s really bothering you.”

Denise finally puts down the medicine stick on the bookshelf. Her eyes welling with tears.

“I feel so betrayed. Why, Awasha? Why did you do it? First you spend the night with that … that fisherman. I know you did. And now Gracie? What the hell was going on in that steam room? My god, you’re a piece of work.”

“You really believe …? I thought you knew me. You actually think I would hit on a student? That something was going on with me and Gracie? And with Michael? That’s what’s really getting under your skin? You’re jealous? Danny?!”

She moves toward the taller woman, reaches out a hand, but Denise, her Danny, steps away. Turns her back, stares out the window at a collection of students dragging suitcases from a nearby dorm toward a queue of limos and taxis. The kids are all heading off to the airport on spring break. The campus will be empty by this afternoon.

“We had something good, you know? But you’ve pissed it away. For what? Some needy teenager … and that n’er-do-well from New Bedford … I could just …”

“Just what?”

“I’m such a fool. I knew the rumors. About you and all those men. Why the hell did I ever think you could change? Why did I think you were the one?”

She heaves a sigh, drops onto her desk to steady the sudden weakness she feels in her knees. Sits among towers of books by Sherman Alexi, Julia Alvarez and Amy Tan, Spike Lee videos. Looking tiny, but fierce, in that gray business suit. Her eyes growing wider, cheeks flushing as she starts to speak.

“You’re not going to do this to me. You’re not going to make me responsible for your happiness. Not now. Not when there’s a killer out there who right now could be—”

“You know what the students call you behind your back? Pokey. They call you Pokey. Short for Poke-Her-Hot-Ass. They think you’re the faculty ho. A native slut. Did you know that?”

She grabs the door nob, flings open the door. Points to the hall.

“Out. Get the hell out of here!”

“Don’t do this.”

“Fuck you, Danny.”

CAESAR Decastro’s only son, lapsed fisherman, failed lawyer, doesn’t know why exactly—maybe he’s hoping to resurrect an old ritual—but he’s walking on Lighthouse Beach in Chatham. Middle of the day. He has dropped off a finger bone with Lou Votolatto, driven out on the Cape to this place that was a retreat for him during the Provincetown Follies case.

He’s thinking about Liberty, the bones in the attic, Awasha, Gracie, killers. And his mother a year dead from uterine cancer. Feeling the bright sun and a southerly breeze warming his skin for the first time in months, when he realizes that the phone in his pocket has been buzzing intermittently for quite some time.

Now he stops walking, watches a pair of gray seals basking together on a pillow of sand, nuzzling. Nipping. Feels an odd urge to bark at them. But finally he turns away, climbs the dune toward the twin lighthouses, fishes in his pocket for the infernal phone.

There’s a message from Gracie. She’s at the airport in Boston, needs to talk to him before she boards her flight. “
Like this is really important, Michael.”

“I’m heading to California, you know?” she says when he calls her back. “It’s my spring break. Like I really need to get far the fuck away from that school. Tory is meeting up with me. We are going to Justine’s house. Maybe take a little road trip to San Diego or …”

OK. Of course. She ought to get away. Not feel the least bit of guilt about leaving him. He’s going to be just fine. He’s a fast healer. Doc P will be just fine, too. Everybody needs some time off. Things were getting way too intense. But … her message sounded stressed.

Is she OK?

“Not really, Mich … if you want … know.” Her voice fades in and out. She’s not holding her cell phone close to her lips, doing something else while she talks. Maybe carrying her bag. “Before I left Tolchie I did … research and … shit, they’re calling my plane. I think I’ve got to …”

“Gracie! Talk to me. Please.”

“Michael.”

“Yeah.”

“They’re boarding my zone. I—”

“Just hold still a second. Tell me what’s bothering you. Don’t get on that plane until—”

“It’s a girl, Michael!”

“What?”

“The body. Our big new clue.”

“What body?”

“The one we found in the attic.”

“A girl?”

“I’m almost sure.”

“But the clothes were—”

“I know. Boy’s clothes … Shit everybody’s pushing ahead … I’ve got to get in line.”

“Talk to me! A girl? How do you know?”

He sits down on a fence rail surrounding the lighthouse parking lot. Pictures her. Purple-streaked hair, Chinese Army coat, black leggings, Doc Martens. Shuffling, backpack on one shoulder, toward the jetway, the ticket agent.

“Those bastards, who … they are. The … Tropical. All their porn and pot magazines … from … Seventies. Like 1973 … ‘75, right?”

“The ones I saw.”

“I checked …
Tolchie News …
those years. Like … library’s archives. These freaking people …”

“Gracie, can you hear me?”

“Sorry Michael it’s a bit of a zoo … bloody jetway … Some lady with two kids … stroller … OK, I’m in my seat. So …?”

“So you were reading old school newspapers …”

“Right. Ninja Girl’s on the case. Wouldn’t you think if a kid disappeared back then, there would be serious coverage in the school paper?”

“Sure.”

“Nothing. I just read a lot of stuff about some kind of rebellions on campus. Like the boys walked out on mandatory chapel one Sunday, the student council wanted the dress code abolished. That kind of stuff.”

“Nothing?”

“Well, nothing except that the first
Tolchie News
in the fall of ‘76 had a story about a girl from Coates who left for her summer break in June ‘75 … and never arrived at her home. Poof. Vanished into thin air.”

“Really?”

“No shit, Sherlock … Hey, can I call you back once I get off this stupid airplane? They’re telling us to turn off our phones.”

“Wait! You think we found her?”

“I think those pricks in Club Tropical did something terrible to her. Then they disguised her body as a boy’s in case anyone ever found the bones.”

“Whoa! I mean maybe, but—”

“You think I’m crazy? Just some wigged-out chick? Michael the flight attendant is giving me the hairy eyeball.”

“This is big, what you found. This missing girl. But the hair on the head was really short and—”

“What about the finger? I swear it had what looked like nail polish on it.”

“I haven’t heard anything from my guy. He’s pretty busy and I just dropped off the—”

“Well when he gets unbusy, ask him if he knows anything about a missing person report on Roxana Calder—”

“Calder? What?”

“Calderón. Roxy Calderón from … Michael the flight attendant, she is like about to …”

“Roxy from where?”

“I got to go, Michael.”

He wants to tell her she’s an amazing kid. Wants to say,
Be careful. Call me from LA.
But she clicks off.

Down on the beach the seals still nip and nuzzle. High above on the dune, the ex-lawyer pictures Liberty Baker drowning in her own blood and starts to bark.