Old School Bones (14 page)

“FROM San Juan, Rambo. Roxana Calderón from the lovely city of San Juan, Puerto Rico. You ever been there?”

“No.”

It’s a late morning, western omelettes and home fries. The former public defender and his cop pal. This time, they’re sitting at the counter in The Fishmonger’s Café near the Cape-Islands ferry terminal in Woods Hole.

“How come? You don’t like the Caribbean? You don’t like to dance to
salsa?”

“What about this Roxana?”

“I guess you’re too young to remember, huh? When were you born?”

“Nineteen seventy-seven.”

“No wonder you’re such a fuck-up. You’re still wet behind the ears, boy!”

“You sound like my old man.”

“He must be a hot shit.”

“Come on! Roxy? Tell me.”

“It was a big deal for a while. The girl’s father was a high-roller. Some kind of big-ass developer in San Juan, turning crack houses and bordellos into upscale condos.”

“You were on the case?”

Votolatto rolls his eyes, shakes his head. “Dream on. I was just a couple of years out of the academy, still trying to get off road detail and into a CPAC unit.”

“Wet behind the ears … so to speak.”

“Knock it off, OK, Rambo? Point taken.”

“But you knew about the case.”

Yeah, he was living in Allston-Brighton at the time, taking a criminology course at Northeastern. Had this professor who was a retired Boston dick. He was teaching, trying to get some traction as a crime novelist. He was kind of obsessed with the Calderón case. Talked about it a lot. Told the class missing person cases were some of the most overlooked and creative crimes they would ever see. Hardest to solve. The “Case of the Magic Airplane” he called it.

“What? Why?”

“The girl. Roxana. Pretty weird. She disappeared on a flight between Boston and San Juan.”

“How’s that happen?”

“See what I mean? Pretty creative stuff, huh? I don’t think they ever figured it out.”

“She vanished from an airplane?”

“TWA something or other. Big jet. One of those L1011s, I think. Or maybe a DC-10.”

“They were sure she got on?”

The limo driver recalled taking her to the airport, the ticket agent remembered checking her in, had the canceled portion of the ticket. Two of the flight attendants saw her, virtually the whole flight, remembered serving her two rum and cokes.

“But she disappeared.”

“Zip. Gone.”

“She never got off the plane?”

The detective pushes his empty omelette platter away from him, burps into his fist. “Another coffee?”

“Come on. How do they know she never got off?”

“As I recall, her whole family was waiting for her at the gate, going to throw her a party. Her sweet sixteen was coming up, I think. Or was it fifteen—what do the Latins call it, a
Quinceañera?”

“Really?”

“Yeah, they waited and waited and waited. No Roxy Baby.”

“Crazy.”

“It was a big investigation, you know what I mean? In the papers and on TV for a month … The father wouldn’t let it go. Got himself in the media daily for a while …”

“He wanted revenge?”

He nods. “But in the end, nothing. They checked every inch of that airplane. Even checked the lavatory holding tanks in case someone cut her up and …”

“But they didn’t check her school.”

“Oh yeah.”

The school, Coates, was pretty pissed off about it, called it an invasion of privacy. But the cops did their job. Nothing. No rumors, no traces of fowl play, no body.

“Until now.”

“Where are you going with this?”

“The bones we found in the attic. The finger.”

“You said it was a boy. Uniform from Tolchester Academy. Necktie, the whole works.”

“Looked like a boy. Short hair, uniform. But what if …?”

“This place, this dorm where you found the bones was a boys residence?”

“Until about ten years ago, I guess.”

“So how the hell did the Puerto Rican
princesa
get there? The attic of a boys dorm back in the 1970s? The whole place, Tolchester, was a boys school.”

“The campus is basically right beside Coates School.”

“You think she was involved in this secret society shit you’ve been telling me about? The ones that your Liberty Baker and the Chinese kid were researching?”

“Like I told you, the place we found the bones, the attic—”

“It was some kind of secret meeting place for one of those societies, right? Old boys club.”

He tells Lou he’s pretty sure they called themselves Club Tropical. From the magazines he found there, the club seems to have been active right around the time Roxy Calderón disappeared. Then the attic looks like it was suddenly abandoned. Sealed up.

“Like those boys had something to hide. Like they killed that girl.”

“Or they all graduated and went to college.”

“Yeah, that could have happened too.”

“Maybe the police never searched Tolchester Academy, Hibernia House.”

“So it seems.”

“But she got on that plane.”

“Those flight attendants ID-ed her from a picture. I guess this kid was rather memorable. Kind of a flamboyant dresser, as I recall. Hot pink mini. Big hair. Lots of make-up. Jewelry.”

“A babe. Like fifteen going on twenty-five.”

The detective shrugs yes, takes a long sip of his fresh coffee.

“When do we get the DNA results on the finger?”

Votolatto closes his eyes, massages his temples with both hands. “I don’t know, damn it. My lab girl is doing this on the sly. I can’t pressure her.”

“We can get gender and race from it, though, right?”

“Yeah, probably. But Christ, kid. I’m going to tell you what I told that nice Indian girl. What do you say we drop this vigilante justice sh—”

“One other thing …” He looks away, fiddles with his coffee mug. “Maybe there’s some nail polish on the fingernail. Can your lab friend check that?”

The cop rocks back on his stool. “You’re a pisser. You know that, Rambo?”

“What?”

“Somebody tries to kill you because you got your nose way deep into someplace it don’t belong. Knocks the shit out of you. And now here you go with that nose again.”

“Hey, Lou. Come on, this is important, right? Two dead kids.”

“I gotta get home. Taking the missus to Boston tonight. We’re going to see
The Phantom of the Opera.
It’s our anniversary. You need a ride somewheres?”

“I’m going to catch the ferry.”

“You’re going to the Vineyard?”

“I’ve got to meet someone.”

“Don’t tell me. Ronnie Patterson’s sister.”

“None of your business.”

“Ask her if she found out yet what kind and color of car that Kevin Singleton kid drives … And leave your phone on, Casanova.”

SHE’S running late, and, damn it, he’s switched his cell off. No way to reach him except speed.

Her Saab squeals to a stop in the Steamship Authority pick-up circle at Vineyard Haven. When she jumps out to look for him, it hits her for the first time all day: the heat. Maybe seventy degrees. She feels suddenly silly wearing her rabbit fur parka. The wool leggings, deerskin boots. Stupid for being late. Crazy for ever asking him to meet her here.

She’s not sure why she wants him to come, whether this is a good idea. Or just another one of ten thousand mistakes she’s made with men. Mistakes born of what? Loneliness, insecurity? Missing her father Strong Deer? Maybe she should patch things up with Danny, stick with women. Maybe she’s just like her brother, just as twisted up inside as Ronnie, by killing, by romance. Maybe it’s a twin thing, this dark hollow in her soul that she tries to hide from herself and the Great Spirit. Maybe she really is a slut.

But she’s back on the island, right? Back home. Her real home. Away from that school, Danny, Bumbledork, Liberty’s ghost. On vacation. Spring break never looked so good, felt so right. The sky bright, light wind stirring her hair, long black threads floating in the air. The water on the harbor a pale blue. Except for the emptiness of the streets, the closed shops and restaurants, the complete lack of leaves on the maples and oaks on the hill above the ferry terminal, it could almost be summer.

And maybe, just maybe, he has come. With or without his phone. And then, well, she’ll see. See if Lou Votolatto had a clue when he said the boy has a crush. Or whether all Michael wants to do is feel like a winner again. Bounce back from his wrecked law career, his failed engagement, his …

Stop thinking!

She finds him standing on a small pier next to the Steamship Authority dock. One leg cocked up on a safety rail strung between two pilings, his hands cradling his jaw. He’s wearing a fresh pair of jeans, a white fisherman’s sweater. His eyes are staring out at the wooden schooners moored in the harbor. She can tell he is thinking about the sea, his mind probably a hundred miles offshore, with the cod fish and the shearwaters. So maybe this is good for him, coming here. Maybe he can heal on the Vineyard, too. She wonders if he has ever heard about the Giant Maushop or the beaches of Aquinnah.

“Hey, sailor!”

He turns to her voice. Pulls the silver Oakley sunglasses off his face. Smiles.

She feels his eyes on her. Tiny explosions rippling from the roots of her neck and arm hairs, across her breasts, down her flanks to her toes.

Then she is in his arms. They hold her with a strange fierceness. As if he will never let her go.
But right now, maybe that is OK,
she thinks. As she kisses his cheek before she can stop herself. She can smell the heat rising from his sweater. Not the pungent, oily scent of Danny. But something sharper. Flinty. A man’s fear. Or his yearning.

She feels herself beginning to shiver, starting to remember the anger frozen on Danny’s face when she said,
They call you Pokey. They think you’re the faculty ho.
And now two girls are dead. One a clue to Liberty’s killer. A convulsion rises in her chest.

“What’s the matter?”

“I promised you we would not talk about Liberty.”

“It’s OK. You can tell me anything.”

She disengages, takes his rough hand. “Come on. I want to show you something. A secret place.”

She leads him down a trail through fields of brown salt hay. They skirt the edge of a large salt pond, pass onto a stony beach. The breeze has begun to stir, a warm wind urging small waves ashore. They rush onto the land, then hiss away, dragging trails of small stones, lady slipper shells. Gulls dive, scoop bait, soar on the up-drafts. Chattering to each other. The air smells of clams.

With the tide out the beach on the southwest tip of the Vineyard is a long strand leading to a point under high red cliffs. She stops short of the ribbons of eel grass marking the surf line. Pulls off her boots. Drops her parka. Hikes her woolen leggings to the tops of her calves.

“Come on.”

He tugs off his Nikes, his socks, rolls up his jeans. The stones and shells hurt his feet, but he follows her to the water’s edge. Feels the icy water swirl around his ankles.

“What is this place?” Part of him watches for seals, feels a bark coming deep in his belly.

She squeezes his hand as she did Ronnie’s when they were kids here. Before they moved off-island.

“The tribal lands. My mother loved this place. I used to call it Black Squirrel’s Beach after her.”

“I used to call her, well, Alice the Great.”

She gives a little laugh. “She really liked you, you know? She would be happy I shared her shore with you. She said you were a committed beach walker.”

He thinks of the short, stout woman with the sparkling black eyes who stood for hours behind the counter of the liquor store downstairs from his apartment. Dead too young like his own mother. Like Maria. How was he to know she was Black Squirrel? He barely knew she was Indian. She reminded him of his
vóvó.

“She was like a mother to me for that year I lived in Chatham.”

“We scattered her ashes here last fall, my brother Ronnie and I.”

“So she’s come home.”

“Yeah, can you feel her here? We believe this is sacred ground. The land of Maushop …”

She tells him of the giant who left his footprint here, whose spiritual center lies among these ponds and beaches and cliffs of Aquinnah. How the boulders beneath the cliff were once the children of Maushop and his wife Squant. How on dark nights you can hear Squant calling to her children in the language of the ancient ones.

“You must feel so … I don’t know how to say this. So … connected, so much a part of things here. So … hugged.”

She squeezes his hand tighter. “I thought you might understand. Black Squirrel said there was something Indian about you.”

He shakes his head. “I just like beaches. I feel things on them. Like I do when I’m out fishing. But when I’m fishing, I feel the water, the air, birds, fish, sometimes whales. A place out of time. On the beach, I feel … I don’t know, something else. History maybe. Evolution.”

“People.”

He hesitates. “Seals, actually.”

She drops his hand, faces him. Laughs. “You’re kidding.” He shrugs. “No, I think of seals …”

“You wish you were a seal, Michael?”

“Sometimes. You?”

“Maybe.”

“Ever bark?”

“You?”

“The truth?”

“Down and dirty.”

“Only when I’m feeling threatened … or really horny.”

“Which would that be right now?”

He’s opening his mouth to answer, or maybe bark, when she throws both her arms around him, drives her tongue between his lips. A basic impulse.

She pulls him tight against her hips, slides her hands over the lobes of his buns. The wench rising inside her skin again. Pokey. Fallen angel of lost girls. Of Liberty.
Maybe this is the only choice now. The only truth for seals.

From what he can tell, the place where they bed each other is some kind of bait shack on the edge of a salt pond. He has to admit he likes the squalor of it all. Not just the place—the musty scent of scallop shells, its cobwebs, the light filtering through salt-crusted windows, the mildewed quilt beneath them on the floor. The oboe calls of seabirds. Her raw nakedness.

Who could imagine a body as tiny as hers as such a hot coil? Both of them slick with her sweat, his. They nibble, slither against each other. Faces lost in tangled hair. Her tongue twisting to his own. Tasting his ears, his breasts. The core of his navel. Lower.

His hands finding the soft, dark places in the arches of her feet, behind her knees. Tracing the curve of her moon. Gliding through the film of oil on her inner thighs. Until his lips find her fingers.

And the rest of him stretches for her soul.

She rises over him. Taking charge. Doing this her own way. Her hands under his arms, squeezing his lats. Her nails piercing his skin. The pain almost too much as she bends to him. Groans from someplace that seems impossibly far away, while her mouth sucks the flesh at the base of his neck.

“Hey, what’s this?” she asks. The small, pale red bloom beneath his Adam’s apple. In the vee between the cords in his neck.

A rose tattoo? What you gone tell you mama now?

She draws his blood to its surface.

Not again!

Even as their torsos surge forward, plunge down. Bucking, spiraling creatures, diving through schools of silver cod. Racing with the currents into a thermal vent. Trying to find the planet’s molten core. Volcanic annihilation. Beyond the bite of a razor’s edge on a girl’s wrist. Beyond the
Playboys
and the
Hustlers,
the Dannys, the Filipas. Beyond Liberty. And death.

A place of bones and no bones. A place where his
vóvó
draws him to her breast and sings the lullabys of Cape Verde. Of Africa.

Until they rise up. Break the surface. Whole again. Their hearts chanting in some ancient language of hunting, fishing. Barking.

And they lie still.