Foursome (24 page)

“Hey, Mr. Private Eye, you don’t hear so good, maybe we give you another ear, help you out.”

The girl with the Tec-9 raised its perforated, five-inch barrel toward my head, giving me a clear view of the thirty-two-round magazine.

I looked at the tall one. “Nice digs.”

She laughed, saying something low and guttural in Spanish to Blanca, who laughed uncertainly, apparently being polite. The other girls, who I guessed to be in their early teens, didn’t break pose.

The tall one said, “This place, the bank want to make it work, let the people down at City Hall know how much they was doing for the community, you know it? Only thing is, they didn’t figure out who the fuck wanna live on this street, they got the money to buy a place like this. So it just stand here. I go down the bank, I tell the man, ‘Look, you got this building, it ain’t doing shit. You want it still standing, you let us use it.
Las Hermanas
, we protect it, keep it clean.’ ”

“Las Hermanas?”

The tall one touched the red stitching on her jacket that showed “Las” in script superimposed over a capital “H.” “
Las Hermanas
means ‘The Sisters’ in Spanish. Nigger homeboys, they take their names from the street they live on, maybe the pro team they wish they play for. We different. We live like family, we call us family. Right, Blanca?”

“Right, Lidia.”

Plucking the driver’s license from my wallet, Lidia looked over at me. “You don’t take such a good picture, man, but you look like you was a jock sometime.”

“College.”

“College man, too, huh? What sport you in, football?”

“Synchronized swimming.”

Lidia laughed, putting the license back in my wallet. “You got some balls, I like that. But, Mr. Private Eye from Boston, how come you take your balls out to the nice ’burbs, bothering my sister’s fucking boyfriend?”

I watched the two girls holding weapons on me. There are times you cite to the statute on client confidentiality, and times you don’t.

Lidia said, “Okay, man. New ear, coming up.”

As she started to say something in Spanish to the two guards, I said, “I’m investigating the murder of his father and mother.”

Lidia shook her head. “Those people, they got killed up north somewheres, not even the same state.”

“I was hired by the defendant’s lawyer to look into it.”

Another laugh. “The defendants I know, they don’t got money for cigarettes.” She let her gaze roam around the room. “One of us get busted, we get some fucking CPCS defender, doesn’t know her ass from the hole she shits in. Don’t matter much, the judge, he don’t know what the fuck to do with us, anyways.” Lidia grew thoughtful. “So, what, you out at Nicky’s place, you think he done his mama and papa?”

I said, “It’s been known.”

“You think that little shit, he could kill somebody?”

“Kind of a rough way to talk about your sister’s boyfriend, isn’t it?”

Lidia laughed again. I was making a great impression on her.

She said, “My sister, she do what she got to do.”

“She has to date Nicky Vandemeer?”

“No, man. Blanca, she don’t have to go to the movies and the pancake house with the little shit. She just got to fuck him, keep him happy.”

Blanca cringed a little at that.

I thought about Nicky sniffling, his eyes reacting to the light from his front door. Then I looked at the girls still wearing their shades and sniffling, too. “So you can spread the coke through his circle of friends?”

Lidia shook her head, coming down off the lounger slowly, languidly, like she was climbing out of bed and doing a slow stretch. She sauntered toward me, reaching inside her back pocket and coming out with a switchblade. Kneeling in front of me, the older sister sat back on her haunches. Raising the knife handle to eye level, she thumbed the release, six inches of gleaming steel snicking toward my face. You try not to flinch.

Lidia lifted the point of the blade to her scar, caressing it toward her chin. “You know how I get this?”

“No.”

“Our mother, she have this friend, he come over when Blanca and me was still living at her place. He fuck our mother, sometimes leave her food money for us. Then one day, he look at me different than he look before? He wait till our mother and Blanca go out, buy some things. Then he decide he give me a try. I push him off, he come for more. He have this knife, this one here, he hold it against my throat, get me down on the floor. He get my pants down, too, then he stick his business in me. It hurt a lot, and I’m crying, bleeding, but he keep sticking it in me, over and over. Then his face, it get all screwed up, and he drop the knife, grab my hair and pull on it, make it better for him, I guess. Well, Mr. Private Detective, while he sticking his business in me, I get hold of his knife, and I stick it in him, you know it? He’s sticking me, and I’m sticking him. And he grab my hand, and he try to break my arm. I let go of his knife, and he pull it out of his gut, and he take a slice at my face, get me like this. Then he get up, and he start to cry, too, because he hurt bad, but he only get to the stairs and then fall down, all the way to the bottom. Neighbors, they find him, call the cops. I’m like twelve years old, so nothing happens. They ask me where the knife is, I tell them, ‘I don’t know. I don’t remember.’ And they send me to this counselor, she know less than the fucking lawyers, that’s possible. But I don’t need no counseling, because I find out a very important thing. When you got trouble, you take care of it yourself, you better off.”

Lidia brought the blade from her face to mine, tracing a similar scar line without breaking the skin. “You make trouble for us, maybe my sisters here, they take care of you. Only you kind of good-looking, so maybe I let you stick your business in me, then I stick this in you.” Lidia gave me the smile, the gaps from the missing teeth aging her. “Just like old times, you know it?”

“You be smart now, you keep that blindfold on till you count to fifty, huh?”

I nodded my head. From the sound of the door and the feel of the seat, Las Hermanas had put me behind the wheel of the Prelude after walking me back from the clubhouse. I could hear the squelching of their sneakers on the pavement, then nothing except traffic noise from Humboldt behind me.

When about a minute had passed, I reached up and took off the blindfold. After my eyes readjusted, I thought about driving to the Area B police station, but I wasn’t sure I knew anybody there who dealt with gangs.

However, I knew somebody who probably did.

S
OME YEARS AGO, THE
mayor had the idea to revive or replace a few of the police substations closed during the prior fiscal crisis. A great idea politically, and five substations have been repainted and beribboned since for grand ceremonies. Given an era of more tight budgeting, however, the problem has been how to staff them. The one on West Broadway in South Boston got the Homicide Unit.

The unit’s sign is a small one, white on dark blue fixed to a medium blue door at the end of a corridor with wainscoting partway up the walls and lockers against the wainscoting. Inside the door are pale blue walls. A big corkboard half covers one with photocopies of new statutes, some mug shots, and a small thermometer. The file cabinets are metal, olive drab in color. The phones are black with gray keypads, and instead of bleating they still ring like all phones used to. The desks are old and made of colorless wood, the chairs padded and black.

Half the desks were occupied that day by men in suits and sport coats and one woman in a blazer and skirt. I walked up to the woman, engrossed in reading the file in front of her. She had long brown hair, big brown eyes, and a pencil between her teeth like a soldier about to undergo surgery without anesthesia.

“Cross, how are you?”

“Terrible.” She spoke around the pencil, not lifting her head from the paperwork.

“How do you like the new surroundings?”

“Don’t.”

Okay. “How about Lieutenant Murphy?”

“He likes them less.”

“I mean, is he in?”

“Yeah. Shall I announce you, or you want to take your chances?”

“I feel lucky today.”

Cross pointed to another door, never once looking up.

I walked to and knocked on the door, got a “Yeah?,” and went in.

Robert Murphy was on his knees, a black hand pulling a green volume of
Massachusetts General Laws Annotated
off the last row of tinny bookshelves behind his desk. He wore a short-sleeved white dress shirt, a crimson paisley tie, and the slacks to a gray suit. His head turned partway as he pushed himself up with his free hand, the other holding the book like a grizzly cradling a salmon in the rapids.

“Cuddy, you’re a hell of a private eye. We move, and you still find us.”

“This just doesn’t have the executive feel of the old place, Lieutenant.”

“Executive.” Murphy sank into his chair and set the law-book down on his blotter near the miniature American flag in a penholder. “Mayor wants to have cops where folks can see them, that’s fine. Needs to have some desk jobs where the commissioner can put a couple of uniforms on light duty, that’s fine, too. But other than acting as scarecrows, there’s no godly reason for us to be over here instead of at headquarters on Berkeley. Sit down, sit down.”

I did. The population around the substation was all white, and Southie produced some of the worst rock-throwing and name-calling at black kids during the busing crisis in the seventies. “How are you getting along with the neighbors?”

“What, being a ‘colored’?”

“That’s what I meant.”

“First few times I stopped in the coffee shop, I made sure it was with some other guys in the unit, two of them from here originally. Word spread, only took about a week to lose that feeling of sitting at a fifties lunch counter in Mississippi. Now everybody’s used to me. Not sure I like that, but what can you do? How’s Ms. Meagher?”

“On a conspiracy trial that looks like it’ll take her to the end of the century.”

“They do drag on. That mean you’re watching a lot of TV?”

“Trying not to.”

“The network stuff’s crap, but the video, now that’s something else again. Last two nights the wife and I rented
Parenthood
and
When Harry Met Sally
. Great flicks. Guess who was behind the camera for them?”

“Ron Howard and Rob Reiner.”

Murphy closed his eyes to slits. “I’m impressed.”

“I don’t know, Lieutenant. It may not be such a good omen that two of our best directors used to be called ‘Opie’ and ‘Meathead.’ ”

A rude noise. “You got something on your mind, how about we get to it? I pulled two new cases this morning.”

“I’m working for a lawyer out of state, some Massachusetts connections, but not Boston until about an hour ago.”

“When?”

“When I spent some time in a clubhouse over in Rox’.”

“Social club?”

“Not exactly.”

“Gang.”

“Right.”

“Which one?”

“Las Hermanas.”

“Las—the Hispanic girls, right?”

“You know them.”

“Just some reports, nothing solid.”

I pictured all the weapons in my face that morning. “Meaning their bark is worse than their bite?”

“Meaning there’s been no cooling bodies for us yet. Couple of drive-bys, slugs all over a porch or store but nobody inside at the time or nobody with their eyes on anything but the nails in the floor, trying to figure out how to get under the boards and away from the bullets.”

“You know anybody in the Anti-Gang Unit who could elaborate on them?”

Murphy thought a minute. “Any of this going to bounce back at me with shit on it?”

“Hope not, but I don’t really have enough information yet to give you odds.”

A smile dallied with his lips without ever getting to his teeth. “Cuddy, honest man like you, how’d you ever get this far?”

On Dudley Street, I parked my car as close as possible to the Area B station. Moving toward the building, I saw several black grandmothers pushing their grandchildren in strollers, two little black boys playing catch with hardball and gloves, and three Hispanic girls sitting on a transit authority bench. The middle girl was a dead ringer for one of my guards that morning, but the colors these kids wore consisted of white blouse, blue sweater, blue tartan skirt, white socks, and black shoes. Their knapsacks looked to contain books, and they almost made me believe in the future of the world.

At the desk, I asked for Larry Cosentino or Yolanda King. Waiting, I listened to a black uniformed officer talking to a black youth, maybe fifteen years old. The kid was decked out in a Hammer T-shirt, purple warm-up pants, and Reebok sneakers. A purple baseball cap with nothing on the crown was stuck by its bill in the beltline of his pants.

The officer said, “Stanley, you’re an imbecile.”

The kid just glared at him.

“Getting caught like that when you know the store prosecutes.” The officer shook his head. “But I’ll tell you what.”

“What?”

“You can spell ‘imbecile’ for me, I’m gonna let you walk on this one.”

A ray of hope on the kid’s face. “Say what?”

“You spell the word ‘imbecile’ for me, and I let you walk.”

“Spell it?”

“Uh-huh. Like A, B, C, and so on.”

The kid drew his lips in and under his teeth twice, then said, “E-M-B, uh, A-S-E-L, uh, L.”

“You’re a genius, Stanley. Walk.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

“Thanks, man. You okay.”

“Send me a graduation picture.”

“Hey, man?”

“Yeah.”

“The fuck does ‘imbecile’ mean?”

“Mr. Cuddy, Yolanda King. This is my partner, Ilario Cosentino.”

“Yollie likes to do things formal. Just call me Larry.”

“And I’d prefer John.”

“Fine,” said King, motioning me to a chair. “Bob Murphy called me.”

I waited for her to continue, but she didn’t. King was early thirties, slender and attractive, with a knowing smile, reddish hair, and a complexion like milky coffee. She wore a yellow turtleneck under a brown houndstooth jacket and over a dark brown pleated skirt. She sat on the edge of a desk in front of a high window with sunshine backlighting her like a fashion model.