Old School Bones (22 page)

JUDGE’S chambers. Edward J. Sullivan Courthouse, Middlesex Superior Court, Thorndike St., Cambridge, MA.

The Honorable Thomas Merriweather leans back in his chair, hands folded under his chin. Looking like a smaller, delicate clone of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in his robe. Except that Merriweather’s skin is as light as
mochaccino.

“You think I don’t know why you’re here, Counselor? You think I won’t have you booked for criminal harassment if you even think of coming on to me the way you came on to Mark Snyder?”

“Criminal Harassment? I—”

“That would be Chapter 265, Section 43A of the Massachusetts Criminal Code, Mr. Decastro. In case you missed that in law school. ‘Whoever willfully and maliciously …”

“Your Honor, with all due respect, I know the statute. I’ve only requested this meeting in hopes of protecting the safety and well-being of my clients—Mr. Patterson, Ms. Patterson, and Ms. Liu—and sparing you and your high school friends, at the least, extreme embarrassment if what I know gets out.”

The judge exhales slowly, his belly sagging beneath his robe. “I have court in ten minutes.”

“You know about the girl who died at Tolchester-Coates in February?”

“What of it?”

“Her name was Liberty Baker. She was black. She grew up just blocks from your old neighborhood in Roxbury.”

“I don’t see where this is going.”

“You went to that school. You know what she must have gone through, being poor and black amid all that wealth and privilege and whiteness.”

“I’m not somebody who dwells on the negative.”

“The school and the local police dismissed her death as suicide. They said that she buckled under the pressure. Under the culture shock.”

A marble stare is creeping into the judge’s eyes. “What does this have to do with me?”

“You were there. You lived through four years at Tolchester. You didn’t buckle under the pressure. Why?”

“I wasn’t going to give the bastards the satisfaction of thinking that I didn’t belong, that I couldn’t make it in their school.”

“So why would it be any different for a girl like Liberty who, by all accounts, was excelling in every arena of the academy? She was a tough kid.”

“People are different, Counselor. Hearts different. Souls. Maybe she didn’t have allies. I had allies.”

“The Club Tropical. Its poker table, the drugs—”

“Are you threatening me?”

“All I’m saying is that Liberty Baker was like you, Judge. Smart. Talented. Resilient. Ambitious. A survivor … And two other things.”

“What?”

“One, she was emotionally incapable of slitting her own wrists because she was terrified of blades. Two, there is strong evidence that someone slipped her a date-rape drug to knock her out before they killed her.”

“Why aren’t the police looking into this?”

“Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Tolchester-Coates pays no property tax on its two hundred acres of prime real estate because as a non-profit the school is exempt from the tax rolls. Instead the school makes a donation of $1 million annually to the town’s budget as a gesture of good will. A donation that the school can modify or withdraw at anytime.”

Merriweather flexes his jaw muscles, knots rising under the dark skin at the base of his ears. “What do you want from me?”

Whoa. Have I finally got his attention? Is he finally feeling the blood of Africa, the blood of warriors surging in his veins? Feeling me? Maybe he—

“Hey, Counselor. Snap out of it!”

He shakes his head, refocuses. “My clients think the same person or people who killed Liberty Baker are the ones who have been threatening and harassing them. Maybe the same person or people who made your life so miserable back in the Seventies. Maybe we’re dealing with the killer or killers of Roxana Calderón.”

The judge rises up from the chair. “We’re done here, Mr. Decastro.”

“The Calderón disappearance was a Federal case, Judge. I found Roxy’s remains hidden in the Club Tropical. You want me to go to the U.S. attorney with what I know? Or do you want to tell me about the war with Red Tooth? The pink pantyhose and Puerto Rico?”

“Sometimes I take a martini after court at the Green St. Grille. About five-thirty.”

A wave runs up the beach, nips his neck. The beach a slurry of wet sand beneath his back. No Cassie. No Island girl. No Africa.

Dried sweat crusts in his eyes. Jesus, for a cup of water. Just plain water. Fresh water. And,
meu spirito santo,
the black girl.

The barman’s eyes look at him like the ghost of midnight past when he reaches the beach pub, asks for a glass of water.
“
You look like you need a whole ocean, mon.”

He tries a swim off the beach. The salt stinging him. Ten thousand needles. And the surf rolling him, wrapping him in a net of white bubbles. Until he is clean laundry.

When he emerges the barman has two white pills and three tumblers of water lined up for him.
“
I seen bitch-bit a thousand times. But you something special, mon. That girl she got you bad. I can see the teeth marks on your neck.”

“I never liked that girl.” The judge’s eyes stare at the richly finished wood of the bar. An ambulance bleats its way along Green St. outside. Another early May evening. Cambridge, Central Square.

“She was Puerto Rican.”

“We only found that out in the end. She told everybody she was from Argentina.”

“Really? Why?”

“Argentina sounds more exotic to a teenager than Puerto Rico. Don’t you think?”

“You mean like Eva Perón.”

“Something like that. She acted like she was hot stuff.”

He takes a long swallow from his glass of ice water. “What do you mean?”

“She dressed like some kind of
Playboy
bunny. Big hair, lots of make-up, skirts as short as the house mothers at Coates would let her get away with, fashion boots.”

“A looker.”

“She used to hang out down at Factor’s.”

“Factor’s?”

“The frappe shop in town back then. Juke box. Pinball machines. Sold cigarettes under the counter to a lot of boys from Tolchie. The girls from Coates would cruise in to size up the horseflesh. Single-sex schools … They tried to keep us apart, the boys and the girls.”

“But you found a way.”

“Not me. I was way too shy. Too scared.”

“Did Roxy ever come on to you?”

He looks away down the bar. “She specialized in rich, white boys.”

“Like the Red Tooth crowd?”

“Among others.”

“Let me guess. Jean-Claude Rausche.”

“He was straight back then.”

“And he got it on with Roxy?”

“I have no evidence.”

“You don’t have to protect him.”

“I said I have no evidence.”

Time for a little lie.
“You know, he’s the one who told me about the pink pantyhose and Puerto Rico.”

“I sort of doubt it, Counselor.”

“You want to tell me what you remember?”

Merriweather swallows off the last of his martini, takes a toothpick, toys with the olive in the glass. “I don’t remember much.”

“Was she into Jean-Claude for drugs? Was he supplying?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“What was in it for him? Couldn’t have been the sex, right?”

“He always bragged about how much he was getting laid.”

“You believed him?”

“He was a stud. Tall, blond, blue-eyed. The girls went for him like steel to a magnet.”

“But he was faking it? Like Roxy and the Argentina thing. Posing.”

“That’s pretty much the conclusion I came to later.”

“When he came out.”

Merriweather’s face is suddenly a waxy shade of oatmeal. A shadow fallen over it. “No … After we found her.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was spring exam week. Right before commencement. We went up into the clubhouse for one last buzz before everybody headed off to college. And to celebrate. Jean-Claude said we should celebrate. The four of us. Mark, Jason, J-C, me.”

“Celebrate graduation?”

Merriweather signals the barman for another martini. It was more than that, he says. The boys had all made a lot of money. They thought they were rich. Each of them was going to walk away from Tolchie with something like twenty-three thousand dollars and change.

“From the poker and the drugs.”

“It was a good business.”

“I thought you guys had gotten your butts kicked in a territorial battle with the Red Tooth boys. I thought they were running the drugs and games.”

The judge smiles, slips back into his old ghetto voice. “Naw, man. That’s how come we had all that money. We whooped their asses. I mean whooped them bad. Put them out of business … for a while.”

“What happened?”

He says that right after spring break a bunch of those Red Tooth boys got their balls trimmed in a hotel room downtown while they were doing a deal. Some folks held them up for a big bag of money. They owed everybody. Never recovered. So the Club Tropical had a corner on the market for the last two months of school. You can sell a lot of drugs at a school when the weather turns warm.

“You guys, Club Tropical, took the money?”

“Naw, J-C just put the word out on the street about this deal going down. He had inside information, you know? Someone had told him the exact time and place. The street took care of the rest.”

“Cristo.”

“I gotta tell you, it felt good. Those bastards had been fucking with us for more than two years.”

“So score one for the little guys.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking when I went up into the clubhouse the last time … Until I saw the body.”

“Roxy.”

“Lying there in the middle of the room like a big old dead bitch dog. A little blood coming out of the corner of her mouth. All dolled up like a cross between Farah Fawcett and Diana Ross. Dressed for a plane ride home … And graffiti written across the club banner over the mantle. I remember part of it said something like RED TOOTH

ROCKS!”

“Rules.”

“What?”

“It says Red Tooth Rules. They killed her, put her there, right?”

“The final fuckover. They got us good … The banner is still there in that attic?”

“Who would move it?”

“Just like the body?”

“Bones.”

He eyes the barman, takes the pills. Chugs the first glass of water, feels his throat for the bites. The raw tender spot below his Adam’s apple.

The barman laughs, “What you gone tell you mama now? The old rose tattoo. She marked you for life?”

Maybe so.

Now this new girl. The Indian princess in the seal skin. The scent of scallop shells, cobwebs, the light filtering through salt-soaked windows of the bait shack, the oboe calls of seabirds.

Her raw nakedness calling to him. From deep in the currents of a thermal vent. Drawing him to the planet’s molten core. Volcanic annihilation. Where his
vóvó
and his mother hold him to their breasts and sing the lullabys of Cape Verde. Africa.

The judge on his third martini, the lawyer his fourth water. Dinner crowd starting to fill the tables, seats at the long bar.

“It was Jean-Claude’s idea to dress her like a boy, put her in the garment bag and hide her under the eaves?”

Jean-Claude had this gray, stony face, says the judge. Like he was trying to freeze out all emotion. The whole time he undressed her. Changed her clothes. Each of the boys contributed some old Tolchie gear so that no one of them could be implicated if anyone ever found her. She had this mane of bleached blond hair. J-C cut it off with the scissors on his Swiss army knife. “It took forever … She looked like a little kid when we zipped her in there.”

“You want to talk about the pink pantyhose?”

“They were on the poker table, we had piled all of her stuff there. We were going to bag it, get rid of it and the hair. That’s when we found out about Puerto Rico.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Mark was going through her handbag, and he found the ticket to San Juan. Then J-C gave me this funny look. Kind of smiled.”

“Why?”

Jean-Claude had an idea. A way to shunt Roxana’s death away from Boston and the school.

“‘Try on her clothes, Squeaky,’ he said. They used to call me Squeaky because I was so small and I had this voice like …”

Something clicks in his head. The pink pantyhose, Puerto Rico. He sees where this is heading. Roxy’s last scene. “So you dressed up like Roxana, pantyhose and all. Got on the plane to San Juan.”

That very afternoon. After J-C got him a blond wig from the costume closet in the Drama Tank. He was scared as shit. He still had her hair in his carry-on. Had some rum and cokes on the plane just to stop shaking. Back then any good-looking chick could get served on a plane. Jesus, he was a wreck.

“But you pulled it off.”

“I changed out of her clothes in the lavatory just before we landed. Caught a flight back to New York that night. Dumped her stuff in a trash can in Penn Station before I caught the train back to Boston.”

“So much for the case of the magic airplane.”

“The worst day of my life.”

“It wasn’t so great for Roxy Calderón either.”

SHE said she would wait for him to finish up with the judge. They would have a date. Sort of. Before they made the drive with Gracie back down to the Cape to crash with Ronnie.

So here she sits. But now it’s sunset, and a chill is starting to settle over her shoulders. She’s holding down a table at a Mongolian
smorgasbord
called Fire & Ice just off the Harvard campus in Cambridge. A glass of sauvignon blanc not enough to take the chill off her here on the outdoor patio. Christ, when she looks up, she can see the first of the evening stars. Or maybe it’s a planet. Venus or Mars.

The phone beeps in her purse. When she fishes it out and scrolls to her missed calls, she sees five in the last four hours from Danny. And one from Ronnie. She’s wondering if she should be returning those calls, finding out what Danny wants, checking in with Ronnie. Wondering if she did the right thing by sending Gracie off by herself to see a fest of classic Fellini flicks at the Brattle. Wondering whether this son of a fisherman is going to show any time soon. Whether she even wants to see him now. Whether she was thoroughly out of her mind when she thought maybe she’d get him a little tipsy over stir-fry.

Maybe drag his tight little Portagee ass into the women’s room, lock the door. Give him the loving of his life.

Or does she really miss a woman’s touch?

And just this instant, she’s wondering what the connection is between pangs of mortal fear and the craving in her loins … when she sees him talking to the hostess, scanning the room for her. And the blood starts buzzing in her thighs.
Oh sweet Jesus. Nooshun kesukqut … Wuneetupantamunak kooswesuonk …

He looks soooo good! Smells so good in the starched white shirt and tie, the navy blazer. She’s lingering in his hug, there above their table, inhaling the scent of Canoe on his neck. Shifting her shoulders just enough to remind him of her breasts, her perked nipples … when two men the size of gorillas push through the crowded room. And grab him. Each one seizing an arm. Each stinking of stale coffee and cigarettes as they pry him free from her embrace.

He flails. Breaks loose. Fists pulled tight to his chest, elbows jutting out. Head tucked. Like one of those ball carriers for the Pats who Ronnie admires. Shaking his tacklers.

One of them dives, gets an arm around his left leg.

The other tries to throw a headlock on him, but he elbows the guy in the eye, knocks him back.

Chairs tipping over. Diners clearing off the patio. The hostess—a pale-faced blondie, eyes big as clams—is backing away toward the bar, shouting into her cell phone, probably at the 911 operator.

She doesn’t know these monkeys, doesn’t know if Michael knows them. But it’s clear he wants to get away. His eyes fierce as he tries to beat off the guy clinging to his leg.

But now the other ape, still holding his injured eye, is reaching into his jacket and pulling out a pistol. Pointing it at Michael.

“Stop! Put your hands over your head or I’ll shoot!”

The second Michael looks to the gunman, stops wailing with his fists, the guy on his leg throws an upper cut smack into his balls.

And Michael hits the floor. Flat, bang, down. Eyes rolled back in his head.

The gorilla with the gun now waving his open wallet, a badge inside, at the crowd. He’s shouting, “Police! Nobody move!”

She starts to run to Michael, but the leg grabber/ball slugger, still on his knees, throws an arm around her, drags her to the ground. Twists her right arm behind her back.

“Don’t move a muscle, don’t say a word! Or I’ll break your fucking arm, honey.”

It’s after ten when Lou Votolatto meets her and Gracie at the McDonalds at the traffic rotary next to the Cape Cod Canal.

“The bastards cuffed him while he was still out cold. Then picked him up and dragged him out the door. His blazer sleeve ripped off. Blood all over his shirt. And me just standing there. Like I can do nothing but see him open his eyes a little and mouth the words
Get Lou.”

The detective stares into his coffee, then looks up across the table at her and Gracie. “Didn’t I warn that dumb bunny the shit would hit the fan if he keeps on letting people think he’s some kind of cop?”

“That’s what this is about?” She rubs her eyes with her fingers.

“What do you think?”

“I think it’s about revenge. I think this is about us getting too close to the killers. I think Liberty Baker and Roxana Calderón are shrieking in their graves.”

He takes a long sip of coffee, looks over her shoulder, out the window at the headlights of cars as they appear, disappear in the dark. “I made some calls.”

“OK.”

“Our boy just got collared by two of Cambridge’s finest. Seems like some doc in Boston filed a complaint. Impersonating an officer, harassment. That kind of thing. Suffolk D.A. issued a warrant. Cambridge P.D. got a tip Rambo was going to shake down a superior court judge. So they staked out the judge and waited. Michael walked into their trap. They grabbed him on the rebound with you at the restaurant. Like no sense bringing the media down on the good judge’s head.”

“Now what, Detective?”

“He’s in the Middlesex County lock-up. You got to get him out … Shit happens in a place like that.”

Gracie reaches out, grabs Awasha’s hand. “You mean someone kills him.”

“The three of you have stirred up a hornet’s nest.”

“How much is this going to cost?” Gracie asks. “Probably a lot more than you have, young lady.”

“Is seventy-eight thousand dollars enough?”