Darkness, Take My Hand (5 page)

My right hand was pressed against my thigh, the fingers digging into the flesh, telling me to stay calm. I cleared my throat. “Seems unlikely.”

“Fucking right, it is,” Jack Rouse said.

“We don’t send photographs, Mr. Kenzie,” Freddy said. “We send our messages a bit more directly.”

Jack and Freddy stared at us with predatory humor in their eyes, and Kevin Hurlihy had a shit-eating grin on his face the size of a canyon.

Angie said, “I have a weak deadbolt on my back door?”

Freddy shrugged. “So I hear.”

Jack Rouse’s fingers rose to the tweed scally cap on his head and he tipped it in her direction.

She smiled, looked at me, then at Freddy. You’d have to have known her for a while to realize exactly how irate she was. She’s one of those people whose anger you can gauge by her reduction in movement. By the statue’s position she’d taken at the table, I was pretty sure she’d cruised past the extremely pissed-off point about five minutes ago.

“Freddy,” she said and he blinked. “You answer to the Imbruglia Family in New York. Correct?”

Freddy stared at her.

Pine uncrossed his legs.

“And the Imbruglia Family,” she said, leaning into the table slightly, “they answer to the Moliach Family, who in turn are still considered glorified caporegimes to the Patriso Family. Correct?”

Freddy’s eyes were still and flat, and Jack’s left hand was frozen halfway between the edge of the table and his coffee cup, and beside me I could hear Kevin taking long deep breaths through his nose.

“And you—do I have this right?—sent men to find security weaknesses in the apartment of Mr. Patriso’s only granddaughter? Freddy,” she said and reached across the table and touched his hand, “do you think Mr. Patriso would consider these actions respectful or disrespectful?”

Freddy said, “Angela—”

She patted his hand and stood. “Thanks for your time.”

I stood. “Nice seeing you guys.”

Kevin’s chair made a loud scraping noise on the tile as he stepped in my path, looked at me with those depth-charge eyes of his.

Freddy said, “Sit the fuck down.”

“You heard him, Kev,” I said. “Sit the fuck down.”

Kevin smiled, ran his palm across his mouth.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Pine cross his legs at the ankles again.

“Kevin,” Jack Rouse said.

In Kevin’s face I could see years of howling class rage and the bright sheen of true psychosis. I could see the little, pissed-off kid whose brain had been stunted and blighted sometime during the first or second grade and had never grown beyond that point. I could see murder.

“Angela,” Freddy said, “Mr. Kenzie. Please sit down.”

“Kevin,” Jack Rouse said again.

Kevin placed the hand that had wiped the smile off his face on my shoulder. Whatever passed between us in the second or two it lay there wasn’t pleasant or comfortable or clean. Then he nodded once, as if answering a question I’d asked, and stepped back by his chair.

“Angela,” Freddy said, “could we—?”

“Have a nice day, Freddy.” She came around behind me and we walked out onto Prince Street.

We reached the car on Commercial, a block from Diandra Warren’s apartment, and Angie said, “I got some things to do, so I’m going to cab it home from here.”

“You sure?”

She looked at me like a woman who’d just backed down a room full of Mafioso and wasn’t in the mood to take any shit. “What’re you going to do?”

“Talk to Diandra, I guess. See if I can find out any more about this Moira Kenzie.”

“You need me?”

“Nope.”

She looked back up Prince Street. “I believe him.”

“Kevin?”

She nodded.

“Me too,” I said. “He has no reason to lie, really.”

She turned her head, looked over at Lewis Wharf, at the single yellow light glowing in Diandra Warren’s apartment. “So where’s that leave her? If Kevin didn’t send that photograph, who did?”

“Haven’t a clue.”

“Some detectives,” she said.

“We’ll figure it out,” I said. “It’s what we’re good at.” I looked up Prince and saw two men walking down
toward us. One was short and thin and hard and wore a scally cap. The other was tall and thin and probably giggled when he killed people. They reached the end of the street and stopped at a gold Diamante directly across from us. As Kevin opened the passenger door for Jack, he stared at us.

“That guy,” a voice said, “doesn’t like you two much.”

I turned my head, saw Pine sitting on the hood of my car. he flicked his wrist and my wallet hit me in the chest.

“No,” I said.

Kevin came around the driver’s side of the car, still looking at us, then climbed in and they pulled out onto Commercial, drove up around Waterfront Park, and disappeared at the curve of Atlantic Ave.

“Miss Gennaro,” Pine said, leaning forward and handing her her wallet.

Angie took it.

“That was a very nice performance in there. Bravo.”

“Thank you,” Angie said.

“I wouldn’t try it twice, though.”

“No?”

“That would be stupid.”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“That guy,” Pine said, looking off to where the Diamante had disappeared and then back at me, “is going to cause you some grief.”

“Not much I can do about it,” I said.

He came off the car hood fluidly, as if he were incapable of an awkward gesture or the embarrassment of a stumble.

“It was me,” he said, “and he looked at me like that, he wouldn’t have made his car alive.” He shrugged. “That’s me, though.”

Angie said, “We’re used to Kevin. We’ve known him since kindergarten.”

Pine nodded. “Probably should have killed him back then.” He passed between us and I felt ice melting in the center of my chest. “Good night.” He crossed Commer
cial and went up Prince, and a crisp breeze swept the street.

Angie shivered in her coat. “I don’t like this case, Patrick.”

“Me either,” I said. “Don’t like it at all.”

Except for a
single white track light in the kitchen where we sat, Diandra Warren’s loft was dark, the furniture rising out of the empty spaces in hulking shadows. Lights from neighboring buildings glazed her windows but barely penetrated the interior, and across the harbor Charlestown’s lights checkered the black sky in hard squares of yellow and white.

It was a relatively warm night, but it seemed cold from Diandra’s loft.

Diandra placed a second bottle of Brooklyn Lager on the butcher-block table in front of me, then sat down and idly fingered her wine glass.

“You’re saying you believe these Mafioso?” Eric said.

I nodded. I’d just spent fifteen minutes telling them about my meeting at Fat Freddy’s place, omitting only Angie’s relationship with Vincent Patriso.

I said, “They don’t gain much by lying.”

“They’re criminals.” Eric’s eyes widened at me. “Lying is second nature to them.”

I sipped my beer. “This is true. But criminals usually lie out of fear or to maintain an edge.”

“Okay…”

“And these guys, believe me, have no reason to fear me. I’m nothing to them. If they were threatening you, Doctor Warren, and I came around on your behalf, their response would have been, ‘Fine, we’re threatening her. Now mind your own business or we’ll kill you. End of discussion.’”

“But they didn’t say that.” She nodded to herself.

“No. Add to this that Kevin just isn’t the type to have a steady girlfriend, and it seems unlikelier by the second.”

“But—” Eric started.

I held up a hand, looked at Diandra. “I should have asked this at our first meeting, but it never occurred to me that this could be a hoax. This guy who called claiming to be Kevin—was there anything odd about his voice?”

“Odd? How?”

I shook my head. “Think.”

“It was a deep voice, husky, I guess.”

“That’s it?”

She took a sip of wine, then nodded. “Yes.”

“Then it wasn’t Kevin.”

“How do you—?”

“Kevin’s voice is ruined, Doctor Warren. Has been since he was a kid. It sounds like it’s perpetually cracking, like the voice of a teenager going through puberty.”

“That wasn’t the voice I heard on the phone.”

“No.”

Eric rubbed his face. “So, if Kevin didn’t make the call, who did?”

“And why?” Diandra said.

I looked at both of them and held out my hands. “Frankly, I have no idea. Either of you have any enemies?”

Diandra shook her head.

Eric said, “How do you define enemies?”

“Enemies,” I said. “As in people who call up to threaten you at four
A.M.
, or send you pictures of your child without a note of explanation or generally wish you dead. Enemies.”

He thought about it for a moment, then shook his head.

“You’re sure?”

He grimaced. “I have professional competitors, I guess, and detractors, people who disagree with me—”

“In what sense?”

He smiled, somewhat ruefully. “Patrick, you took my courses. You know that I don’t agree with a lot of the experts in the field and that people disagree with my dis
agreements. But I doubt such people wish me physical harm. Besides, wouldn’t my enemies come after me, not Diandra and her son?”

Diandra flinched, lowered her eyes, and sipped her wine.

I shrugged. “Possibly. You never know, though.” I looked at Diandra. “You said that in the past you’ve feared patients. Any of them recently released from wards or prisons who might hold a grudge?”

“I’d have been notified.” She met my eyes and hers were vibrant with confusion and fear, a deep, encompassing fear.

“Any current patients who might have the motive and resourcefulness to do this?”

She spent a good minute thinking about it, but eventually shook her head. “No.”

“I’ll need to speak to your ex-husband.”

“Stan? Why? I don’t see the point.”

“I need to rule out any possible connection to him. I’m sorry if it upsets you, but I’d be a fool if I didn’t.”

“I’m not obtuse, Mr. Kenzie, but I promise you Stan has no connection to my life and hasn’t for almost two decades.”

“I have to know everything I can about the people in your life, Doctor Warren, particularly anyone with whom you have a relationship that is not picture perfect.”

“Patrick,” Eric said, “come on. What about privacy?”

I sighed. “Fuck privacy.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me, Eric,” I said. “Fuck privacy. Doctor Warren’s, and yours too, I’m afraid. You brought me into this, Eric, and you know how I work.”

He blinked.

“I don’t like the way this case feels.” I looked out at the darkness of Diandra’s loft, at the icy sheen on her windows. “I don’t like it and I’m trying to catch up on some details so I can do my job and keep Doctor Warren and her son out of danger. To accomplish that, I need to know everything about your lives. Both of you. And if you refuse me that access”—I looked at Diandra—“I’ll walk away.”

Diandra watched me calmly.

Eric said, “You’d leave a woman in distress? Just like that?”

I kept my eyes on Diandra. “Just like that.”

Diandra said, “Are you always this blunt?”

For a quarter second, an image flashed through my brain of a woman cascading down onto hard cement, her body filled with holes, my face and clothes splattered with her blood. Jenna Angeline—dead before she hit the ground on a soft summer morning as I stood an inch away.

I said, “I had someone die on me once because I was a step too slow. I won’t have that happen again.”

A small tremble rippled the skin at the base of her throat. She reached up and rubbed it. “So you definitely think I’m in serious danger.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. But you were threatened. You did receive that photo. Someone’s going to a lot of trouble to screw with your life. I want to find out who that is and make them stop. That’s why you hired me. Can you call Timpson for me, set up an appointment for tomorrow?”

She shrugged. “I suppose.”

“Good. I also need a description of Moira Kenzie, anything you can remember about her, no matter how small.”

As Diandra closed her eyes for a full minute to conjure up a complete image of Moira Kenzie, I flipped open a notepad, uncapped a pen, and waited.

“She was wearing jeans, a black river-driver’s shirt under a red flannel shirt.” She opened her eyes. “She was very pretty with long, dirty-blond hair, a bit wispy, and she chain-smoked. She seemed authentically terrified.”

“Height?”

“Five five or so.”

“Weight?”

“I’m guessing about one ten.”

“What kind of cigarettes did she smoke?”

She closed her eyes again. “Long with white filters. The pack was gold. ‘Deluxe’ something or other.”

“Benson and Hedges Deluxe Ultra Lights?”

Her eyes snapped open. “Yes.”

I shrugged. “My partner switches to them every time she tries to quit by cutting back. Eyes?”

“Green.”

“Any guesses on ethnic background?”

She sipped her wine. “Northern European maybe, a few generations back and maybe mixed. She could have been Irish, British, even Slavic. She had very pale skin.”

“Anything else? Where did she say she was from?”

“Belmont,” she said with a note of mild surprise.

“Does that seem incongruous for any reason?”

“Well…if someone’s from Belmont, usually they go to the finer prep schools, et cetera.”

“True.”

“And one of the things they lose, if they ever had it, is a Boston accent. Maybe they have a light one…”

“But not a ‘If you come to my pahty don’t fahget the beah’ type of accent.”

“Exactly.”

“But Moira did?”

She nodded. “It didn’t register at the time, but now, yes, it does seem a bit odd. It wasn’t a Belmont accent, it was Revere or East Boston or…” She looked at me.

“Or Dorchester,” I said.

“Yes.”

“A neighborhood accent.” I closed my notebook.

“Yes. What will you do from here, Mr. Kenzie?”

“I’m going to watch Jason. The threat’s to him. He’s the one who feels ‘stalked,’ it was his picture you received.”

“Yes.”

“I want you to limit your activities.”

“I can’t—”

“Keep your office hours and appointments,” I said, “but take some time off from Bryce until I have some answers.”

She nodded.

“Eric?” I said.

He looked at me.

“That gun you’re carrying, you know how to use it?”

“I practice once a week. I’m a good shot.”

“It’s a little different shooting at flesh, Eric.”

“I know that.”

“I need you to stick as close as you can to Doctor Warren for a few days. You can do that?”

“Certainly.”

“If anything happens, don’t waste time trying to get a head shot or put one in some attacker’s heart.”

“What should I do, then?”

“Empty the gun into the body, Eric. Six shots should put down anything smaller than a rhino.”

He looked deflated, as if his time spent at the gun club had just been revealed for the futile exercise it usually was. And maybe he really was a good shot, but I doubted anyone who attacked Diandra would be wearing a bull’s-eye in the center of his forehead.

“Eric,” I said, “would you walk me out?”

He nodded and we left the loft, walked down a short hall to the elevator.

“Our friendship can’t get in the way of how I do my job. You understand that, don’t you?”

He looked at his shoes, nodded.

“What’s your relationship with her?”

He met my eyes and his were hard. “Why?”

“No privacy, Eric. Remember that. I have to know what your stake is here.”

He shrugged. “We’re friends.”

“Sleep-over friends?”

He shook his head and smiled bitterly. “Sometimes, Patrick, I think you need a little polish.”

I shrugged. “I’m not paid for my table manners, Eric.”

“Diandra and I met when I was at Brown working on my doctorate and she was just entering the graduate program.”

I cleared my throat. “Again—are you two intimate?”

“No,” he said. “We’re just very good friends. Like you and Angie.”

“You understand why I made the assumption.”

He nodded.

“Is she intimate with anyone?”

He shook his head. “She’s…” He looked up at the ceiling, then back at his feet.

“She’s what?”

“She’s not sexually active, Patrick. By philosophical choice. She’s been celibate for at least ten years.”

“Why?”

His face darkened. “I told you—choice. Some people aren’t ruled by their libidos, Patrick, hard as that concept may be for someone such as yourself to understand.”

“Okay, Eric,” I said softly. “Is there anything you’re not telling me?”

“Like what?”

“Skeletons in your closet,” I said. “A reason why this person would be threatening Jason to get to you?”

“What’re you implying?”

“I’m not implying anything, Eric. I asked a direct question.
Yes
or
no
is all that’s required.”

“No.” His voice was ice.

“Sorry I have to ask these questions.”

“Are you?” he said and turned and walked back to the apartment.