Shallow Graves - Jeremiah Healy (2 page)

Uh-oh. "Let me see that."

I looked at somebody's poor penmanship. "That's
Holt, Harry."

"Whatever."

"No, not whatever. We've got a problem."

"What?"

"Holt and I had a go-round last year. Still has
a low opinion of me."

"What kind of go-round?"

"He thought I horned in on one of his cases."

"Yeah, but on this one, you got the right to
horn in. I can give you a letter and all."

I shook my head and returned the slip. "Won't
matter to Holt. He won't give me squat."

Now the pink paper trembled in Mullen's hand. "Jeez,
John, can't you . . . like, apologize to the guy or something?"

I sat back without saying anything.

The slip trembled some more before he put it down.
"What's the matter?"

"I'm just wondering."

"Wondering what?"

"You call me in for a heavy case when I didn't
leave the company on exactly the best of terms. Then you want me to
stay on the case after I tell you I may not be effective in dealing
with the cop assigned to it. Something smell funny to you, Harry?"

Mullen took a breath and chewed the inside of his
cheek, the way he did when he'd been a little shoddy in the old days.
Then he came forward, working one hand in the other.

"Between you and me, John?"

"
Everything has been so far."

"No, really. I mean it."

"Between you and me, Harry."

"The pressure . . .” Mullen's voice got a
little scratchy, and he cleared his throat. "The pressure's
worse than I've ever seen it. I don't know if the company's . . . I
don't know if Empire's going to be okay with the economy and all,
especially around here."

"Go on."
 
"Winningham
. . . You see, this claim, the letter and all, came in when I was up
in Portland. We got this new rule. Any claim with a face amount over
three hundred thousand has to get reported to Home Office.”

"So?"

"So Winningham down in New York gets wind of
this one when we fax him Yulin's letter last week. Before he sends us
the app', he calls me and says, ‘Give this one to Cuddy.' "

"Winningham wanted me to have it?"

"Yeah."

"He give you a reason?"

"He said he felt bad about all the shit we
heaped on you."

"Winningham said 'shit'?"

"Uh, no. No, what he said was 'indignities'."

I pictured Winningham. Ivy League smile, razor-cut
brown hair, shirt cuffs he'd shoot like a magician about to do a card
trick.

"Harry, I'm not exactly convinced that the milk
of human kindness is behind all this."

"That's what I said to the guy, John."

"What'd he say back?"

"Winningham said . . . Aw, shit, he said if I
couldn't handle this, maybe I was getting a little light to be
running a regional office."

I watched Harry Mullen chew on his cheek some more.
Thought about how he backstopped me when I slid into the bottle over
losing Beth, even drove or carried me home a couple of times. Thought
about his wife and kids and how he'd look to another company at a job
interview. Winningham was a son of a bitch, and I could see him
canning Harry for this while saying it was because of other mistakes
that probably had piled up since the cutbacks. On the other hand, it
was possible that Winningham saw the handwriting on the wall for
Empire, the preppy prince just feathering the private-sector nest he
might have to fly toward himself.

Mullen said, "John, he thinks we owe you this
one."

"He does."

"His exact words. 'Reparations, Harry. We need
to effectuate reparations here.' "

Indignities, reparations, and effectuate. Four
syllables, every one. Sounded like Brad Winningham, all right.
 

-2-

ON THE DEST IN FRONT OF LIEUTENANT HOLT AT HOMICIDE
WERE A multipart form and a soggy paper plate with six congealing
french fries. Around forty-five, Holt wore a short-sleeve white shirt
and plain wool tie. His gray hair was snipped close, his skull like a
round magnet that had picked up iron filings. The chin was square and
the nose long, enough lines in his forehead for terrace farming. The
portrait of a man who'd had a humorectomy.

Holt's right hand held a stubby pencil above a box on
the form. He entered two numbers in the box, then used his left hand
to reach for a treat. When the hand couldn't find the plate, his head
rose. Holt pinched a fry just as he caught me standing in his
doorway.

"Lieutenant."

"Christ on a crutch. Cuddy."

"Nice to be remembered."

"Not when it's me doing the remembering."
Holt apparently forgot about his fry, still between thumb and
forefinger. "The fuck do you want?"

"Can I come in and talk about it?"

"Tell me first. Then I decide whether you get to
sit."

"I'm doing an outside investigation for Empire
Insurance on one of their death claims."

"Empire?"

"Yeah. They had the model who was killed in her
apartment."

"
Danu . . . ?"

Holt seemed to suffer a brain cramp.

"Lieutenant, I think it was 'Dani.' Mau Tim
Dani." I pronounced it the way Harry Mullen had.

Holt stopped for a minute, face unreadable. Then he
dropped the fry and said, "Sure, Cuddy. Sure, I can spare a
minute for that."

I took it I could come in and sit down. Holt used the
time to tip back in his chair and fold his hands over his stomach.
They had to stretch some to do it.

He said, "So what did Empire tell you?"

"Not much. She got strangled, apparently by a
burglar, but the modeling agency that had the policy on her seems
kind of quick on the trigger."

"And you'd like to see our jacket on it, right?"

"Right."

Holt stopped again, just short of smiling at me.

"Lieutenant?"

"I was thinking about last year, with that Marsh
guy and the hooker at the Barry."

"You know I wasn't involved in that."

"
How about what happened afterwards?"

"I was in jail, remember?"

"I remember a lot of things, Cuddy. And like I
said, it's not so good for a guy in your line of work to have me
remembering. But you've got to make a living, too, right?"

I wasn't following the way this was going. "So I
can see the jacket?"

"Seems to me last time I showed you a little
cooperation, it blew up in my fucking face."

I didn't need this. Then I thought about Mullen and
his family and how much my old chief investigator needed my old job.

"Lieutenant, all I'm asking for is a little help
here."

"A little help? A little help, that I can give
you."

Holt stood and crossed to a file cabinet, yanking
one, then another folder out before deciding on a third. He returned
to the desk and laid the file on it, but in front of his chair, not
mine. Settling into his seat, he opened it, scanned a cover sheet,
then looked up at me.

"Tell you what, Cuddy."

"What?"

"I'll feed it to you. Like they do with the
little chunks of fish at the Aquarium."

"The Aquarium."

"Yeah. I'll toss you a little chunk, and then
you make like a seal and catch it in the air and clap for yourself.
What do you say?"

I drew in a long breath, thought again about Mullen's
goofy kid with no teeth, and took out a pad and pen. "Fine."

"First off, the girl, she gets it on the top
floor of a three-story in the South End. She's supposed to be going
to a party downstairs, then they're going out afterwards somewhere."

"Who's hosting the party?"

"Another model, name of Sinead something or
other." Holt pronounced the name the Irish way, Shuh-nude.
Probably thanks to the rock singer. "Only after this Mau Tim
doesn't show on time, they go looking and find her Dee-Oh-Ef."

"DOF?"

" '
Dead on floor'. "

Maybe the humorectomy didn't take. "Who's
'they'?"

"This Sinead character and two guys. One's a
Jap, ad exec over on Newbury, first block and very upscale. The
other's a black guy, photographer."

"Names?"

Holt seemed to think about that, then said, "Sure."
Skipping ahead in the file, he said, "The Jap, Larry Shinkawa."

"That's S-H-I-N-K-A-W-A?"

"Right. The colored guy's Oscar Puriefoy."

"
Can you spell that one for me?"

Holt did.

I said, "How about Sinead's last name?"

"
She's with the same modeling agency as the dead
girl. How many 'Sineads' can they have?"

Holt was enjoying this. I said, "Go on."

He read some more of the file. "Like I was
saying, they go up to look for this Mau Tim and have to break down
her door. They find the body crumped on the floor, nice shade of
blue. This Shinkawa checks the fire escape."

"Fire escape?"

"Yeah. He figured that's how the perp got out of
there."

"How'd the killer get in?"

Holt looked at me. "Same way, it's a Break and
Entry." He went back into the folder. "Then this Puriefoy
tries CPR on the girl, but her throat's crushed from the perp's
hands, so that did about as much fucking good as an enema."

I looked at Holt, but he was still in the jacket.
Homicide hardens you after a while, but this wasn't hardness or even
gallows humor. This was Holt having fun with me in a way nobody
should enjoy.

"Can you back up a little, Lieutenant?"

The face rose. "Huh?"

"Did the guy who checked the fire escape see
anything?"

"No."

"
We know who had keys to the place?"

"No. How come you ain't clapping, all these
little chunks I'm throwing you?"

I took another breath. "The people downstairs at
the party didn't hear any kind of struggle upstairs?"

"How the hell . . . Oh, I see what you mean. No,
Cuddy, the girl was killed on the top floor of the house, and the
party was on the first floor."

"Who lives on the second?"

"Nobody. Family just keeps it furnished, case
somebody wants to stay over."

"The dead girl's family?"

Holt smiled. "Yeah."

"You talk with them?"

"
Not much. Just with the uncle. Dani, Vincent."

The landlord name in the application for the policy.
"How about mother and father?"

Holt's smile broadened. "I think I'll let you go
for that on your own."

Swell. "When did all this happen?"

"Week ago Friday."

"Time of day?"

"
The call to 911 was 7:45."

"Quarter to eight on a Friday night in April.
Kind of an odd time for a B&E.

"Used to be. Now we get them during Thanksgiving
fucking dinner."

"One of the chunks I'm supposed to catch
wouldn't be any leads you've got?"
 
"No
leads to throw, Cuddy. We got a dead girl and part of a necklace near
the body."

"Necklace."

"Fancy fucking thing. Purple stones."

"Amethyst?"

"No. The uncle called it 'iolite.' "

"Never heard of it."

"Me neither. Looks like the girl maybe surprised
the perp as he's going through the jewelry box. They fight over the
necklace, and it breaks, him getting away with most of it and a
couple of other things the uncle knew she used to have."

"How do I get the uncle?"

"Lawyer, downtown firm."

"Number?"

"Let your fingers do the walking."

Okay. "Anything from forensics?"

"The party animals, they pretty well wrecked the
body position and all trying to bring the girl back to life."
Holt skipped ahead again to a photo envelope. "Here's a couple
of pictures you might like to see."

He spun them to me like a man dealing poker. Both
were eight-by-tens. The first showed part of a necklace against a
hardwood floor background, peeking out from under the edge of a print
futon couch. A large purple pendant and some purple stones above it,
all set in what looked like gold. The gold appeared to lead to a more
elaborate, but missing, neckpiece. The second photo was of an
Amerasian woman, taken from her feet back up toward the face. The
hair on her head seemed stringy, maybe from being wet. The robe she
was wearing was open, no panties or bra. Her skin tone was golden and
perfectly consistent, no tan lines or blemishes. The only problem was
the abrasions down toward the throat, where a smudgy blue spoiled the
skin. Her eyes were only half-closed, the irises glazed in the giving
over of vision from life to death.