Old School Bones (21 page)

“YOU know how things are at that school,
byao-go.
When it comes to respect, these
lao wai
don’t understand anything,” she says.

Almost adds,
Like fuck them, huh, cuz?
But then she remembers where she is. On her knees. In bare feet. Eating moon cakes and drinking
oolong
at a miniature table in a nearly authentic Mandarin teahouse, hidden in the woods of Chappaquiddick Island, the Vineyard’s high-rent zone.

This man is family. Old-school Chinese, what’s more. Looking over her shoulder at something outside with the dull, steady eyes of a tiger.

She tries to get his attention. Flips her hair off her right ear in a suggestive way. Crosses, uncrosses her legs beneath her. Flutters her eye lashes. “All they ever think about is power and money, right?”

Her flirting has no effect.

He continues staring past her, out the window, grunts something in Cantonese. Then in English. “I hated that school!”

“I know what you mean. I just dropped out, Su Shen-San. Goodbye Tolchester-Coates. And … please forgive my intrusion. But mother always tells me that if I have trouble in America, call Cousin Jason. She says you will understand.”

He nods, slowly, closing his eyes as he does. She thinks he looks much older than her father and mother, even though they are about the same age. Maybe it is the gray hair, the sunken cheeks, bare feet. Or maybe it is just that he wears a silk
chi pao
robe like her grandfather in Shanghai. Fills this teahouse retreat with expensive artifacts of the empire, decorative orange trees, and music CDs of the
guqin,
the ancient zither of the Imperial Court.

The man has become a phantom. Made his bundle in venture capital. Cashed out. Created his own private fucking version of the Forbidden City here in the forest. Ming vases and all. She would bet her sweet ass the dude smokes opium. Wonders what it would be like to take the lavender dragon into her lungs. Got to be better than the hash and weed she was getting from Kevin.

“You need money, a place to stay?” He pauses. “I am a bachelor, solitary. Trying to find, to follow, the way of the Buddha. You understand? This may not be the best place for a teenage girl, but I can make arrangements for you in Boston or New York until you and your parents—”

“I have friends. I’m staying with friends.”
I think.
“But I need your help … Someone killed my best friend. Tried, is trying, to kill me … There is a killer loose at Tolchie.”

She watches as his head snaps out of the dream he’s having, watching a mother duck and ducklings paddling in his pond. When she feels his eyes beginning to tug on her, she says, “He’s killing girls … You know what I mean? Like AGAIN.”

Later she will tell Michael and Doc P,
his lungs just flat fucking stopped. Freaking froze, folks!
The blood so absent from his skin, she thinks she can see right into his soul. See the skinny adolescent boy hiding in there, the one his schoolmates called
Chop
or
Chop Suey.
See the boy copping an attitude, bragging about his contraband connections. Just to get a little credence from the fucking Spartans at Tolchie.

As a rebel of sorts. As a player with the new gang on the hill. Like fuck the Red Tooth types. The white ballcap boys.

“I’m a good student,
byao-go.
I do my research. I know about the Club Tropical. And you. The drugs you were bringing in to sell. The war with Red Tooth.”

He puts down his little blue teacup on the low table in front of him and settles into the lotus pose. “I live in shame.”

“The ancient ones say it is never too late for the horse to come to water. Help me. Please. My friend Liberty Baker is dead. Murdered.”

“I always knew these things would come out.”

“You know about the girl that died in 1975, don’t you? You know what happened to Roxana Calderón.”

“It’s too late.”

“I don’t think so. My friends and I found her body hidden in the attic of Hibernia House. Where you had your club room. Where you ran the poker games.”

He squirms, begins to rock back and forth. “It was not MY club room. I did not run the poker.”

“You just supplied the drugs,
byao-go?”

“You are too young, too free to understand. That school thirty years ago was a viper’s nest. No one was safe. Alone. Ever. You had to have your clique, what you call your
posse.
Or the older boys, the richer boys, the
lao wai
would eat you for lunch.”

He wants to tell me something. He wants to clear his conscience.

He rocks slowly, an emaciated monk, eyes closed now.

“You’re right. I cannot understand what it was like for you. But you have to know, it is not over. They killed Liberty in February. She was black. Someone nearly clubbed me to death in my sleep. Like kill the nigger, slap down the chink, you know? Want to see my bruised ribs?”

“Fascists!”

“Who, Su Shen-San? The Red Tooth boys?” He nods.

“Red Tooth killed Roxy Calderón?”

“It’s not that simple …”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t really know how that girl died.”

“Club Tropical guys killed her? Is that what you mean?”

There are tears in his eyes. “Such terrible shame. I should never have …”

“What?”

“We were just boys. Stupid boys. Playing gangsters. All for fun. All for a sense of defiance and protection.” A memory wrinkles his face. She cannot tell whether he wants to laugh or cry.

“Byao-go?”

“Please, I must be alone now.” He stands up.

She stands too. The custom for a good Chinese girl, an act of respect for her elder.

“Give me something to go on.
Byao-go.
Something to stop this killing. To save myself. Please! I’m scared.” Her eyes plead. Teeth bite her lower lip as she fumbles with the black slicker that she borrowed from Michael.

“May the Buddha be with you, cousin.” He’s actually backing her toward the door, pressing his palms together in prayer. Bowing. Repeatedly.

Fuck, I’m losing him.

She remembers the list of the Club Tropical members.
The judge, what was his name?
Maybe if she can just throw it out there, the way desperate detectives do in cop shows, she’ll get this ghost to toss her something back. Maybe not a confession or a map. But possibly some bread crumbs to follow.

“Maybe Thomas Merriweather can help me, then.” He squeezes his eyes shut for a second. “
Byao-go?”

“Make him tell you about the pink pantyhose … and Puerto Rico.”

Bingo! Ninja Girl scores.

She smiles. “Just grant me a favor or two, OK Su Shen-San?”

“Please, just go.”

“First, if my parents call, tell them I will be staying with you for a couple of weeks until I can get everything arranged for a transfer in good standing from Tolchie.”

“Pleaaaaaaaaase!”

“Second, can I use your bathroom?”

THE ex-lawyer/ex-fisherman stands on the work deck of the
Rosa Lee.
He’s waiting for an acknowledgement from his father … who is trying to splice a new eye in the winch cable.

“Want to give me a hand here, Mo, or what?”

He shrugs. “I’m not exactly dressed …”

Caesar looks at his son. A stiff in a blue suit, white topcoat. “What the hell …?”

“Don’t ask, OK?”

“You going to let me in on the secret? Or just stand there like one of those
palhaços
on
Law & Order?”

“What can you tell me about the
crioulos,
about the Africans in our family? About Vóvó Chocolate?”

“You think she has something to do with these dead girls? Or.” Caesar Decastro drops the steel marling spike in his hand. It hits the deck with a clang. He stares at Michael with slits for eyes, tries to read him. “Or is this about another attack of
saudade.
About that girl in the Bahamas?”

“She was my first time.”

The beach. Her arms tightening around his back. Holding him against her. The African body. Slippery. Tasting of salt, gin. A basket of limes. Her breath on his neck.

Her pelvis pressing against his hips. They kiss. Long, slow. Her hand between his legs. His fingers under the hem of her bikini, gliding along the curve of her thigh.

He doesn’t know how they get nude. Only that this is his first time,
mamãe de dios,
and her long legs are struggling to clutch his hips to hers. As he sucks on her neck. Here where waves break and river away into the dark. Stars on her face. Chocolate cheeks tilting toward the moon. Her body a mermaid’s. Jesus. Surf thundering offshore on a reef.

She frees her hair, lets down the thick ponytail so he can bury his face in the black curls, the hot jungle of the Bahamas.

Cristo.
The first time. Kissing. Deep. Deeper. Harder. Legs cradling him, wrapping him in
abraços.
Loins churning together.

The blood of cheetahs and gazelles scorching his veins. And hers. Silky, oiling skin. Taught muscles binding them, their souls.

“Don’t go. Don’t ever go, sweet Callaloo! Sweet baby.”

“I don’t want to hear the details, buddy boy. Really.” His father snaps his Zippo out, ignites a Merit. Leans back against the deckhouse in the shade of the bridge deck, takes a deep drag.

“Sorry … But you asked, you know?” He drops back, rests, his butt on the steel bulwarks of the boat. Stares at his feet in the cordovan Bass tassel loafers. Thinks he must look as foolish as he feels. A fisherman in lawyer’s gear … faking he’s a cop.
Um palhaço.
A clown.

“What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yeah you do. You came down here asking me about the
crioulos
, and your Vóvó Chocolate. I don’t know how we got off on this Bahamas thing. Really, man, I …”

Her eyes black, wet. Begging a question he can’t hear. Can’t imagine.

“I feel like this stuff is all connected for me. I just don’t see the pattern.”

“Pattern?
Cristo,
you think you can read life’s patterns. Are you talking about fate, Buddy Boy?”

He hears disbelief in his father’s voice.” No. Yeah.”

“Jesus. You used to be such a happy, simple kid before you started in with studying the law. We used to talk about the Sox and the Bruins. Fish, beer, and coffee. Now it’s like you want a road map to happiness, the rules of the universe.”

“I just have questions.”

“Yeah, like what?”

“Like how come nobody ever talks about Vóvó Chocolate in our family?”

“She was your mother’s
mamãe.
I don’t know, kid. We sort of lost touch with that side of the family.”

“Are you ashamed because Vóvó was black?”

“Cape Verdean. Like you said.”

“She’s African.”

“You think that ever bothered me? Look at me and your mother.”

“Yeah, but how come nobody ever talks about it?”

“What’s to talk about? Your mother and me, we grew up in New Bej. Portagee capital of the world. White, black, Indian. Who ain’t a mix? And who gives a squid’s shit?”

“But …”

His father says the races have been mingling in New Bej since the whaling days. Probably back to the Indians and Pilgrims. The Decastros even have the blood of South Seas Islanders, like that harpooner in
Moby Dick.
Queequeg. Michael’s great grandfather came from some island in …

“The central Pacific. How can I forget? You must have told me about a thousand times.”

“Well, there you go.”

“Not really.”

“What?”

“We never talk about the Africans. We must have family there. But … but it’s like Vóvó dropped into New Bej from another planet.”

“Actually, she came on a packet from São Vicente … A mail-order bride.”

“Really?”

“Your grandfather paid fifty dollars for her in 1936.”

“He bought her? She was a slave?”

His father exhales a huge smoke ring. “That’s how it was done back then.”

“Weren’t there plenty of available women in New Bej?”

Caesar shrugs. “Beats the shit out of me. Maybe he had a thing for brown sugar.”

“Maybe I do too.”

“You think that’s something to be ashamed of?”

“I get the feeling some people think it’s the kiss of death.”

“You don’t really believe that?”

“How did Vóvó die? Or my grandfather?”

“Maybe you ought to get out of that suit and find a real job, forget about the dead and gone. You think they care about you?”

“I’ve got to see someone in Provincetown.”

When he wakes, water’s rising around him—cool, black. What’s left of the beach is little more than a slurry of wet sand beneath his back. The stars are gone. The moon. So is she. A sultry wind blows off the island. Dried sweat crusting in his eyes. Lips, chest, tops of his legs covered with fine white sand. Fumes of gin, lime, something rank etching the insides of his mouth, his nose, vocal cords. Waves piling up seaweed in his crotch, armpits. The roar of the surf. How long has he been here? Hours maybe. Alone. Fucked. Left for dead. Refugee of his first time. Survivor of Africa. Of the Bahamas. The tides of blood.

No Cassie. No Island girl. No kissing cousin. No mermaid.

Cristo!
He must have passed out.

From the bar he hears Marley singing
“
One Drop.” Then another song, “Africa Unite.” A wave runs up the beach, licks his neck, ears. He never imagined it could feel this lonely to be the one left behind. The Callaloo Baby.

IT’S only sixty degrees at noon, and windy, in Provincetown. But she feels the sweat rising on her scalp and at the back of her neck. The knot in her stomach that always came just before she lay down with Danny.

The first thing she thinks as she sees the studio is
this guy must be rich.
Not that she really knows what a sculptor’s studio is supposed to look like, but it doesn’t take a real estate broker to tell her that anybody who owns his own wharf in P-town is worth way more than seven digits.

This is not one of the massive commercial wharves in the center of town. The Rausche Studio is a warren of gray-shingled fishermen’s cottages and sheds mitered together, a miniature village atop huge timber pilings. It looms high above the tides of Cape Cod Bay at the West End of Commercial St. Exterior walks cluttered with a funky collection of nautical castoffs. Anchors, mooring bits, a steel wheelhouse, life rings, air scoops, dories, docking lines, a dozen rusting navigational buoys of different sizes and shapes. Not the stuff tourists think is quaint. More like salvage from ship breakers.

One of the largest sheds halfway out the wharf has its barn doors propped open to the sea breeze. A man inside is cutting up something that looks like a small rocket ship or a bomb. The acetylene torch shoots sparks out the door.

“That’s our boy,” says Michael. He stares into the studio, nearly hypnotized by the blue flame, orange sparks.

“I’m not getting good vibes.” She feels the urge coming on to pray again in the language of her ancestors. “Maybe we should be talking to Judge Merriweather first.”

Michael’s voice is barely audible over the crackle and hiss of the cutting torch. “We’ve got nothing yet beside the club list, Snyder’s stories about drugs and poker, and Su’s obscure remark about red panty hose and Puerto Rico. We go to the judge with that kind of stuff, he’s going to laugh in our faces.”

She frowns, feels the heat rising in her cheeks … while Gracie seems lost in the image of the welder himself.

He is tall, slender. Wears white denim overalls, a flannel shirt. Bright pink. A lime green bandana over his hair. A large diamond stud in his right ear. Fashion Minnie Mouse goggles.

“I told you he was gay.”

She feels her cheeks tighten. “Can you just leave it be, Gracie? Not everything’s about sex.”

“Maybe it’s important, Doc.” The girl pops a coy smile.

Michael shrugs. “Really. She has a point. I had this murder case in P-town, you remember the one with the drag queen from Bangkok? In the end, everything came down to—”

“Great Spirit, not you, too?”

“Well, it did. It all came down to sex. Or love.”

She shakes her head, rubs her eyes.
Maushop, what have I gotten into?
Now she really wishes she had never agreed to bring these two to P-town today. Or shared that motel room in Welfleet with them last night. Yeah, she and Gracie had their own beds, and Michael slept wrapped up in a comforter on the floor. But it just wasn’t right. She barely slept. She could feel their bodies, maybe even her own, sending off silent blues riffs.
Why?

“Come on, Doc. Lighten up. How come all of a sudden you’ve gotten so uptight? Since when have you—”

She stomps her foot. “Just drop it! OK, Gracie?!”

The stomp shakes the wharf.

The welder feels it. Looks up from his work, lifts the Minnie Mouse goggles onto his forehead, eyes the trio looking at him from ten yards away.

“Can I help you?”

She shoots Michael and Gracie a fried look. “All right! I’m going to talk to this guy. I’ll do it, OK? But give me some space.”

“Come on, Michael take me to lunch.” Gracie’s voice is suddenly indifferent. “Call us when you’re in a better mood, Doc.”

She waves her hand in the air. “Whatever!”

“Excuse me?” The welder looks confused.

She goes with the curious fact Ninja Girl dug up online last night. “Isn’t Denise Pasteur your half sister?”

He shuts off his torch, sets it on the ground. Surveys her. Deep blue eyes moving slowly over her. The long brown hair, the copper/cinnamon skin, the perfect breasts beneath her red cardigan, the small muscular body in the tight black jeans.

“So you’re the Indian she’s been fucking, love?”

She feels her lower back lock. Tells herself this is going to suck, but she’ll do anything at this point to find and stop Liberty’s killer.

“I can see why Denise has a thing for you. You’ve got all the goods, honey.”

She cringes, circles the rocket/bomb thing he has been welding.
You call this art?
Keeps it between her and the sculptor. “I really didn’t come here to discuss my personal life.”

He presses his hands together. “How cute, you’re blushing! Let me guess, you used to think you were straight. But now darling Danny has got you turned all inside out. Dangling from a string.”

“This isn’t about Danny.”

“Yeah right? She show you her collection of rubber
schlongs,
yet?”

“Maybe you could stop deflecting.”

“Oh, sweetie, nice word. Does she love it when you talk all therapy to her?” He does a soft
salsa
beat with the palms of his hands on the rocket/bomb. It sounds like a timpani.

Maybe I have to lie,
she thinks. “You know that guy who was with me? He’s a cop.”

He licks his lips, winks. “Cute. Kind of rough around the edges, though. Right? Dark, Latin cowboy. But maybe that’s how you like your boys. Rough. Maybe …”

She glares at him. “I’m sure you know why I’m here. I’m sure one of your old pals from the Club Tropical has told you what’s going on.”

He puts his hands on his waist, bats his eyelashes. His Little Miss Muffet impersonation.

“Cut the shit, Jean-Claude.” She has her cell phone open in her hand. “Or I’m going to get the cop back here. You can explain to him about where you were the night Roxy Calderón turned up dead at the Club Tropical.”

“Ouch! Danny know you bite, sweetie?”

“That girl with the cop—she found a tag from Tolchester Laundry-Clean in a garment bag that held Roxy’s body. The tag had your name on it.” She watches his face for some flash of recognition. Or guilt. Or fear.

But nothing. He just beams a Bette Davis half smile. Tight lipped. Eyes amused. Possibly considering options. “So … those bastards at Red Tooth are at it again? I heard about that black girl.”

“She was one in a million.”

He shrugs.

“I need to know about Roxy. And Club Tropical. I need to know how she ended up wearing boys clothes in your Brooks Brothers garment bag.”

“Red Tooth plays for keeps.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Why don’t you ask the Singletons or Malcolm Sufridge? You really think he fired you because you were playing find-the-fairy-cave with that little Chinese hottie in the sauna?”

For the second time since she’s gotten here, she feels her cheeks scorching. Doesn’t know what to do, maybe call for reinforcements?
How does he know I’ve been fired?

She pulls out her phone. “I think you better tell your story to the police.”

He shakes his head, lets a laugh out as he reaches down to the floor, picks up his torch in one hand, fishes a lighter out of a chest pocket in his overalls. “I’m not talking to anybody, sweetie. I’ve already had my ass-whipping from the Red Tooth boys.”

“Are you talking about Roxy Calderón?”

“She was an insecure little tramp. And she got caught in the crossfire.”

“In the war you were having with Red Tooth.”

“You have no clue.” He turns on the acetylene. Snaps the lighter. The torch pops to life. A long blue flame.

She has to say something, get some credence from this jerk. “I know about the pink pantyhose … and Puerto Rico.”

He gives her the Bette Davis smile again. “And I know your brother Ronnie would never survive prison again … that your dark, Latin cowboy is no cop.”