Serpents in the Cold (19 page)

“The police have given him a clean slate.”

“But not you.”

“No.”

He wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand, turned to Dante. “I'm sorry. Sheila seemed like a sweet girl.”

“Seemed? You knew her quite well, no?”

“Maybe I'm not on the same page as you.”

Cal raised his voice above the music. “Cut the shit, we know about you two.”

Foley cleared his throat. “I admit we shared a dance or two. I'm not going to hide that.” He ran his hand through his voluminous hair, then poured them another round.

“Then how about it?” Cal's grin was more savage than friendly. “How long was it?”

“Was what, O'Brien?” Foley looked at him, irritated.

“Your affair with Sheila.”

Foley turned to Dante, shrugged his shoulders. “It's not my intention to offend you, Dante, but she and I had a brief thing. Call it what you want, a tryst, an affair, it amounted to just a few intimate moments together. I've had my share, names and faces I forgot once they closed the door. So I won't tell you any lies. She was different. I respected her, I was fond of her, and I treated her like a lady.”

“Jesus Christ already,” Cal said. “How long?”

“Three, four months. Not quite. About a year ago.”

Foley shook his drink, the ice clinking against the glass, and drank down what remained of the whiskey.

“Again, I'm sorry. I mean it. And my brother—I still can't believe he'd be involved with anything like this.”

Dante nodded. “It's okay, we've no beef with you. We're trying to make sense of it all too.”

Down at the other end of the bar, one of the Boston College boys dropped his beer glass and it shattered on the floor. They all laughed and cursed and nobody seemed to pay attention to them, as if wearing tuxedos gave them free rein to act like fools.

“It was a romance,” Foley said, and sighed. “We knew it had an ending when we started.”

“But it was still serious?”

“Not really…Look, we both had other loves in our lives. She was smitten with somebody else and I am a married man. I couldn't do anything but walk away.”

Cal glanced toward the congressman's table. Celia was watching the three of them.

“Would you have left Celia for her?” he asked.

“That's none of your goddamn business.”

“It must be at least twenty years, no?”

Foley's eyes gleamed with a sudden anger, as though he had just realized he was in the midst of being set up. “That's a low blow, even for you. I love my wife. But that doesn't mean I have to refuse the occasional woman.

“These women, they're just affairs…I'm not tricking them into something or making them think that I have feelings that I don't. Celia knows deep down…she understands…or she would…”

Dante asked, “And that's all Sheila was?”

“I said it already, she was different from most.”

“But the problem was that Sheila wasn't a one-man mistress.”

“What are you trying to get at?”

“We heard you were out with her at a jazz club, a colored jazz club on Columbus. Not a class act place like this, where all the blacks are onstage, or in the kitchen cutting vegetables. They seen plenty of Sheila. Sometimes with you, sometimes with this other guy named Renza, and we heard of a Mario, too.”

“Bobby Renza, that half-ass crooner. And Mario, on the side?” Foley held his glass to his mouth and laughed. “You two don't know your ass from your elbow.”

“Is that right?”

“Are you two serious? This Mario is Mario Rizzo from the North End, and his stage name, the name that stuck, was Bobby Renza. They're one and the same asshole who introduced me to Sheila.”

Somebody at the bar had lit up a cigar, and its smoke lingered in the air around them.

“Boys, please. I don't know what you're driving at, but it's making me uncomfortable. I won't pretend nothing happened. Sheila and I had a good time together, but she had her heart set on Renza.”

The band shifted the tempo and started playing a standard swing song that sounded like a Tin Pan Alley version of Jimmy Dorsey. Foley retightened his tie and straightened his jacket. He leaned in between the two of them and raised his voice above the high, shrill sounds coming from the trumpet. “You two saw her?”

Dante nodded, grim-faced. “Yeah, we did.”

“How bad was she?”

“She was bad. Lots of hate went into it.”

Foley's eyes glistened and he suddenly appeared vulnerable. “I know they'll catch whoever did it, and soon. I have full confidence in our police.”

He sighed deeply, his handsome face flushed from alcohol. “Well, gentlemen, my meal has been sitting at the table for a half hour…I apologize…”

He motioned to the bartender with a lift of his hand. “Put these on my tab, and give these two friends of mine a bottle each.”

“And glasses, Mr. Foley?”

“No, they won't be staying. I can tell they don't feel much at home here.” He gave a laugh as if he were using it simply to clear his throat, and then, as he stood between them, placed a hand on each of their shoulders, a gesture that could be witnessed from afar as either fatherly or downright condescending. “She was a darling girl. For a moment, I admit, she had my heart.”

“One other thing, Michael,” Cal said as he went to turn away. Foley raised his eyes questioningly. “You paid for the headstone, the headstone for the child.”

“The child?”

“Sheila's child. It's buried in a graveyard at the Sisters of Clare convent in JP. Sister Bridget…,” and he gestured to the table at the far end of the ballroom where members of the Catholic clergy sat, “sends her regards.”

“I don't know anything about any child, Cal. I didn't know Sheila was pregnant.” The congressman shook his head in disbelief, and his eyes shone as if on the verge of tears. He cleared his throat. “I donate to the church regularly, and always to the Sisters of Clare. They do what they will with the funds, use it wherever it's needed most. I have no say in that.”

He stared at Cal as if waiting for something more, then gestured to the bar. “I see Pat has your bottles waiting, gentlemen, and I have people doing the same.” He smiled in a way that appeared both melancholy and bittersweet. “Good night, gentlemen,” he said, nodding, and they watched as he strode toward the banquet tables, a hand raised in greeting to someone on the dance floor, and then bowing in apology to his waiting dinner guests and to Francis McAllister, who turned slightly in his chair, like an aged raptor, to watch them.

“That guy doesn't like us much,” Dante said, staring back.

“No, not much.” Cal raised the bottle to McAllister in mock salute, and the man finally turned away. “And I'd like to know why.”

_________________________

Savin Hill, Dorchester

IN THE CELLAR
beneath the light of a bare bulb Cal worked the heavy bag, worked his taped hands until, exhausted and drenched in sweat, he could barely raise them. He leaned against the bag as if it were his opponent, resting his head against the rough grain and breathing hard, then, driving his forearm and elbow into the bag, gave what he had left in a flurry of combinations and uppercuts.

Too tired to do any speed work, he sat on the weight bench and, with each arm, did sets with the fifty-pound dumbbells. He followed with knee curls. He did seventy-five-pound weights with his left leg and then, more slowly, his right. He didn't look at the leg, didn't want to see the scarring that thickly veined the thigh, but he could feel the hole, the absence of flesh, in the hollow of his hip. He breathed out as he raised the weight, trying to ease through the pain. When he could do no more, he ran water in the slop sink, splashed water over his face, and drank deep from the tap.

He dried his face with a hand towel and pulled on his sweats, sat at the workbench, lit a cigarette, and cleaned his two government-model M1911 Automatics. He dismantled his guns and cleaned their parts. With a toothbrush he took off chunks of carbon buildup, stoked a bore brush through the barrels, then wiped the inside of the magazine well, the ejector, the guide rails, and the area around the chamber. He tuned the radio to the news and caught the sports. His cigarette smoldered on the edge of the wood.

After he was done cleaning, he oiled each gun, the base of the hammer assembly, and then lightly greased the guide rails. Singing “The Wild Colonial Boy,” he racked the slides to make sure their recoil springs were set, pulled the triggers and listened to their clicks, then wiped down the guns again and chambered the nine-round magazines. Outside through the squat basement windows he could see that the day had darkened and that it was close to dusk.

He went upstairs and made some coffee, pulled on a dark turtleneck Aran knit sweater over his sweatshirt and a pair of heavy wool military khakis. He slid the guns into twin shoulder holsters, took his old leather jacket out of the back closet beyond the kitchen and his black wool cap. He drank the coffee slowly, wrote a note for Lynne telling her he was going in to the office and would be back late, and left it on the kitchen table. She was working the graveyard shift at the Carney again, and he hoped he'd be home before her.

BLACKIE CAME OUT
of the Dublin House with his collar up, the Kinneally brothers in front and on either side of him, standard formation for a lowlife like Blackie who, because he was always stirring things up with rivals, was always waiting for some manner of payback. If there was a hit coming, his boys were going to get it first; Cal wondered if they knew that or if they were too stupid to care. Five minutes before he'd sent a young runner out to check the streets. Cal knew that this was also standard for Blackie, having a local kid—they all idolized Blackie, wanted to be just like him when they grew up—act as a sweeper, checking the way for possible assassins waiting in alleys or in cars. Blackie looked at both sides of the street, took his time lighting a cigarette, and then stepped forward, and two other cronies came out of the bar doors behind him.

They got into Blackie's black Lincoln with Blackie behind the wheel and motored up the Avenue toward Lower Mills, took a right on River Street, and then followed Washington into Mattapan. At McGuire's Package Store on Blue Hill Avenue, Blackie and his boys made their first stop, and Cal knew that they were collecting the dailies from the till. Cal kept a safe distance, and it helped that it was overcast and raining. Visibility was poor, and even close to the streetlights the darkness pressed. When he knew they were about to make a stop, he passed them and parked farther up the street; sometimes he curled back, using side streets, and waited behind the Lincoln until it moved again.

He followed them through Mattapan and then into Roxbury. They went down Columbia Road back into Dorchester, past the darkened Strand Theater in Uphams Corner, and then took Boston Street into Southie. They took a right before the Old Colony housing project and pulled up before a dilapidated triple-decker, spears of ice hanging from twisted and shattered gutters. Cal eased into a spot on the main road, backed up so that he'd have an angle on the house, checked his watch, turned off the engine, and waited.

_________________________

Scollay Square, Downtown

AN HOUR AFTER
the murder made print, Cal and Dante stood at the entrance to the alley behind Dempsey's and stared at the dumpster where the latest victim had been found. Dante squatted on his haunches to look at the ground, but Cal stood because his leg was acting up again and it hurt too much to do anything else. A black and white with its revolving blue lamp and squawking radio idled outside the Hub Bar B-Q, but it had nothing to do with the business in the alley. A freezing rain gave the alley a pewter cast, all the cement and stone weeping with damp. It ran off the top of Cal's hat to his collar, and he shivered.

“Not much use looking in the snow. There's been a hundred people through here since they found her.”

“Just trying to see him here that night.”

“Well,” Cal said, and sighed as if it pained him. “It's not Blackie.”

“How do you know that?”

“I've been following him the last three nights. He didn't do this.”

“Jesus. You want to be careful.”

“What, and have him grab Lynne one of these nights? You're the one that said he told you he'd been watching her. Think I'm going to let that happen?”

“No, no, you're right. Just, I could've helped, that's all.”

Cal's mood had darkened and he tried to shake himself out of the funk. He nodded toward the dumpster. “Scarletti would have had to drag the body in here. It's not like he used the truck.”

“Or maybe she came voluntarily and he did her in the alley?”

“Too much blood; it would have been everywhere. Reporters would have had a field day with that. It'd be a front-page shot for the
Herald.
They said he sliced open her neck, same as the others, but you can see from here clear to the dumpster, and the only thing is snow that's been walked on. He's using another reefer.”

“You think so?”

“Kill them, take his time, let the bodies freeze, and then dump them when he likes. Still looks the same.”

“So he has another trailer.”

“This is a jump from the highway. To get around he'd have to drop the trailer and just run the rig, the Peterbilt.”

Cal sighed, stomped his foot to get the feeling back in it. “The papers say it was another prostitute—you haven't heard anything?”

“No one else I've talked to has seen anyone that looks like Scarletti.”

The back door to Dempsey's opened and a kitchen hand came out, a bucket of leftover dinner slops held against his soiled apron. No more than twenty, sleeves rolled up, arms scalded pink from hot water. He lifted the top off the dumpster and, grunting, hefted the bucket over the rim, shook it until its contents slopped into the bin. From the sounds of it, the dumpster had been emptied since the discovery of the young woman; foodstuffs splattered and thumped against its metal.

The washer looked up, caught them staring. “What the fuck you looking at?”

Cal was in no mood for a fight, but he didn't like the kid's tone, either.

“We're looking for an asshole. Are you the asshole?”

The kid thought about saying something else and then, sour-faced, went back inside the bar and slammed the door.

“Well, you've ruined his day.”

“Yeah. Let's hope.”