Foursome (33 page)

“Hey, man,” he said, voice cracking a little from the tension inside him as he raised it, “I would’ve let you in, no sweat.”

“Don’t you ever go to school, Nicky?”

He jammed his hands into his jeans pockets like an embarrassed cowboy. “My parents got wasted, remember? It’s like an excellent excuse.”

Still the raised voice, too loud for the distance between us. I just watched him.

Beckoning me to follow him into the living room, he said, “Come on in, man.”

Come on in, not “So, what do you want now?”

I followed him. There was no salsa music this time, no sound at all in the house.

Vandemeer tried to plop himself into the colonial-style couch again, but like the voice and the attitude, he couldn’t quite pull it off.

Taking one of the matching chairs, I said, “You seem awfully cordial for the boyfriend of a girl I had to kill.”

He cocked an ear, which clinched it for me.

Nicky said, “Hey, man. I mean, like what could you do?”

I just watched some more. And listened.

The kid fidgeted in the couch, his sneaker losing traction on the carpet. “So, that it?”

“No, Nicky, it’s not. Actually I’m here to talk with your uncle.”

The bad color drained to white. “My … uncle?”

“Hub. I’d like to have a talk with him.”

“He, uh, he ain’t here.”

I tilted my head toward the picture window. “That’s his car in your driveway.”

“That?” A failed laugh. “Oh, that’s not his. That’s—”

“It’s his, Nicky. Where is he?”

Her voice came from the dining room threshold. “He’s down in the game room, Mr. Private Eye.”

I turned my head slowly to look at her. Lidia Quintana was wearing the school outfit, her hair in a braid and no makeup. Another Intratec Tec-9 rested in her right hand, the perforated barrel lazing in a slow circle circumscribing my chair.

I said, “I thought you’d be next door.”

Quintana smiled, the gap in the upper teeth like a third eye on me. “I seen you go up to the old lady’s house. I figure, you be stopping here next, so I come over first.”

Vandemeer said, “Lid’, I don’t—”

“Shut up.” Never breaking the smile. “Nicky, you go over, give our Mr. Private Eye a little frisk, make sure he don’t have nothing on him.”

The boy wet his lips, clearly not crazy about the suggestion. “Lid’, what if he like … grabs me or something?”

I said, “Then she’ll shoot us both.”

Quintana laughed. “You a smart one, all right. Nicky.”

He got up awkwardly, quartering his way over to me. With shaking hands he did the front of me, not very comprehensively.

Lidia said, “Okay, Mr. Private Eye. Now you stand up, and Nicky checks the other places.”

I rose, slowly. Vandemeer ran his hands quickly and lightly over my back, hips and legs, clearly feeling funny about touching another male at all.

“He doesn’t have anything.”

Quintana said, “Okay. Come on, Mr. Private Eye. We gonna go down, see the uncle. Nicky, you go first.”

He didn’t argue with her, which I thought showed some sense on his part. As he drew even with Lidia, she backed away from the line of march, making sure there were always at least eight feet separating her from me. Very professional.

Vandemeer led us into the kitchen and down a half flight of stairs. Despite the differences in the architecture of the houses, the paneled game room resembled the one in Steven Shea’s place. The furniture was teal leather rather than art deco, but another wet bar nestled into one corner and duplicate photos of The Foursome in slightly different frames dominated the walls. A relatively happy space in which to be entertained.

Except I doubted the preceding guest thought so.

Hub Vandemeer lay sprawled on a leather lounger that seemed about half reclined. His hands dangled off the armrests, his head lolling at an uncomfortable angle into the light. The uneven eyelids told me the angle and the light weren’t having nearly the impact that Lidia’s knife had delivered to the center of his chest. The room had a jumbled smell to it, the coolness of the basement retarding but not preventing decomposition and not even retarding the reek of urine and feces.

Nicky put his hand up to his mouth and nose, covering them.

I imitated him at the door upstairs, letting my voice rise and crack. “Hub looks pretty dead.”

Quintana said, “Mr. Car-man, he come over Saturday, just after I get here. I have to walk fifteen blocks from the bus, they don’t got real good public trans’ out here, you know it? Anyways, he don’t know I’m up in the bathroom, looking at the blisters I got on my feet from these fucking shoes. Mr. Car-man, he’s really on the rag, screaming to Nicky about how one of his cars—like he still owned it?—one of his cars, it gets used in a drive-by, these spic chicks—you like that, Mr. Private Eye? Spic chicks?”

“Not especially.”

“Me neither. I come out, I show Mr. Car-man my spic-chick Tec-9 here, he all of a sudden decide he don’t like it, either. He start apologizing, but he seen me here, recognize me from the television and all. I say that to him, he say, oh, no, no, he don’t gonna tell nobody I’m here. I tell him that’s right, we gonna tie you up in the basement for a while, just so I can get away. Mr. Car-man, he wanna believe that, he wanna believe it so much, he probably pee his pants right then, promising me he don’t tell nobody, we let him go after that.”

I looked over to the body. “Where’re the ropes?”

Quintana’s scar curled over her cheek. “Poor Mr. Car-man, we don’t get that far. I sit him in the chair, I decide I really don’t like that spic-chick shit. So I come up behind him, tell him to put his hands behind the chair, and I come down with my knife, both hands, like I’m gonna do myself the way those Jap warriors used to in their own stomachs, but surprise, surprise, his heart get in the way.”

She laughed. “For a car dealer, he got a big heart.”

I thought I heard Nicky stifle a wretch.

Lidia gestured casually with the Intratec. “How about you sit down in that other chair, Mr. Private Eye.”

“I don’t know, they look kind of hazardous.”

She laughed again. “You got some balls, man. Too bad we don’t get a chance to get it on. But I don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t be thinking about fucking the man killed my sister. What do you think, Nicky?”

The boy didn’t know what to do, other than he didn’t want to take his hand away from his nose and mouth. So he just shook his head twice.

To me, Quintana said, “Nicky, he fucked my sister enough. She told me about it. But since I’m here, he can’t seem to get it up.”

She turned to the last living Vandemeer. “Well, tell you what. How about you take a little
venganza
for Blanca, huh? A little revenge for the love of your life, maybe get your business back in business?”

Nicky started to shake his head, but Lidia leveled the Tec-9 at his chest, which froze him. Then she brought the muzzle back to me, walking to him carefully, using her free hand to bring his right one up to receive the pistol. She kissed him on the right ear, her tongue outlining the cartilage.

Releasing the weapon to him, Quintana said, “All you got to do is pull the trigger.” Nicky’s eyes stared at me hollowly above the hand he still had held to his face.

As Lidia stepped behind him, her eyes lit up, the scar on her face doing a snake dance of pleasure.

In the rising voice, I said, “O’Boy.”

Boots and shoes seemed to tumble down the basement steps. Nicky was a touch slow turning his head and body, dropping the weapon as he saw the boots came with black pants and black Kevlar vests, M-16s pointing at him under the steady eyes of Sergeant Harold Clay and another cop I didn’t know. Paul O’Boy was behind and between them, his snub-nosed thirty-eight on Lidia, not Nicky.

Even Quintana seemed thrown off by the noise. Then she inched a step toward the weapon on the floor, her right hand flexing.

O’Boy said, “Go ahead, you can make it.”

The tone a father might use to coax a kindergartener onto her first two-wheeler.

Lidia weighed something. Then, crossing her arms, she said, “Fuck you.”

And that part was over.

“Y
OU SAY THE UNCLE
was due back at work today? The kids were pretty stupid not to hide his car.”

I said, “I doubt they were thinking that far ahead.”

O’Boy nodded. We were sitting in the front seat of his unmarked sedan, engine off and windows down. The flurry of official activity around the cul-de-sac and the Vandemeer house reminded me enough of the scene outside my condo building that I was trying not to pay attention to it.

O’Boy said, “Still, it was good of you to go in first and rig the door for us, case the guy was still alive.”

I looked at him. “He deserved the chance.”

Another nod.

I said, “Can I have my gun back now?”

He passed it to me, handle first, cylinder out and empty. The bullets trickled like nuggets from his other hand into mine.

Reloading, I looked toward Mrs. Epps’s ranch. I couldn’t see her, but I imagined she was having a field day through one of the windows. “You never checked the Shea house?”

O’Boy shrugged. “Got the word from Boston about the drive-by with you and the girls there. Had a uniform stop at the Vandemeer house once Friday, another time Saturday, talking to the kid Nicky as kind of a pretext for watching for this Lidia. A real sweetheart she turns out to be.”

“The uniform didn’t call in the convertible?”

“He did. We ran the plate, came back registered to the uncle’s dealership. Seemed righteous enough to be in the kid’s driveway, uncle visiting the orphan, you know?”

O’Boy said the last in his innocent voice.

I ignored the lead-in. “But you never checked the Shea house?”

Another shrug. “Who knew? Besides, I kind of figured that was your territory.”

This time I picked up on him. “Because of me investigating the killings up in Maine.”

“That’s right.” O’Boy fiddled with the turn signal. “So, you figure this here cleans that up for you?”

“No.”

“How come?”

I explained why the gang theory didn’t wash.

He mulled it over. “I don’t know, Cuddy. I was you, I’d really think about trying to hand your jury this Lidia on a platter. No harm done, seeing she’s gonna be a guest of the Commonwealth for the rest of her natural life, and she’s a nice place for Shea to lay off the killings up there.”

“The jury might buy it, but I don’t.”

“So what do you do next?”

I looked at him, thinking about how he’d used me as a cat’s paw for his new chief. “I think Lidia summed it up pretty well.”

“Huh?”

“When she said, ‘Fuck you.’ ”

O’Boy shook his head. “Harsh words. They’re never a help, Cuddy.”

When I gave my name to the receptionist at DRM, her security guard companion called Dwight Schoonmaker. I waited until he came through the door, trying very hard to give the impression he hadn’t been running.

“What do you want?”

I said, “I need to talk to Anna-Pia Antonelli.”

Schoonmaker’s shoulders moved around inside his suit, a tan poplin today. “She’s been away. She’s probably pretty busy.”

“I’d like to see her anyway.”

He seemed to make up his mind as though the decision already had been dictated to him. “Come on.”

“No security badge this time, Dwight?”

He looked at me, then his guard, before saying to the receptionist, “Do it.”

Thirty seconds later, I followed Schoonmaker through the heavy door, into the big room with lots of employees, and to the special elevator.

I said, “Antonelli’s with Keck Davison?”

The doors opened. The chief of security stepped in and said, “Come on,” stressing the last word this time.

Inside, I waited until the doors closed. “You know, you really shouldn’t have gone against the sheriff’s orders.”

Schoonmaker’s jaw rippled. “What orders?”

“About not going onto Steve Shea’s property up in Maine.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You were seen, Dwight baby.”

Without having to, he pushed the button for “3” again.

Tyrone Xavier was waiting for the elevator as it opened on Davison’s office suite. Xavier wore a blue suit instead of the blazer, converging wrinkles behind the knees of his pants. He seemed surprised to see me, but not particularly startled.

“Mr. Cuddy, right?”

“Good memory.”

“For the things that matter.”

In a clipped voice, Schoonmaker said to him, “Mr. Davison available?”

Xavier never shifted his eyes from my face. “You’ll have to ask one of the secretaries, Dwight.”

Schoonmaker bit something back, then walked to the nearest woman behind a desk.

Xavier said, “How’s Steve doing?”

“Getting by.”

“That bad, huh?”

I kept my voice neutral. “How’s business?”

The smile of a Marine who’s set the perfect ambush and knows it. “About to be booming.”

“I’m glad for you.”

“I earned it.”

“Maybe that’s why I’m glad.”

Xavier’s smile wavered as he raised his wrist. “I’ve got a meeting in the city. You be needing to see me about anything?”

“If I do, I’ll leave word with Keck. By the way, is that really a Rolex?”

“No, but it will be.” His smile dissolved. “Take care, Mr. Cuddy.”

“You, too.”

As Xavier went by me and into the elevator, Schoonmaker’s voice said, “Hey, Cuddy, let’s go.”

Today Davison had on a suede sweatshirt with horizontal bands of burgundy, ivory, and kelly green over the blue jeans. His office looked more out of
Star Trek
than a wardroom. A modernistic, contoured swivel chair in turquoise leather and matching visitors’ chairs complemented the thickest piece of Plexiglas I’d seen in the building. A black halogen lamp like an oil derrick rose from one edge of the desktop.

Davison watched me over the half-glasses from the swivel chair as I took one of its sisters across from him. When Schoonmaker started to sit as well, the boss said, “Dwight, I believe I can handle Mr. Cuddy on my own.”

Schoonmaker bit back something else. Another day like this, he’d have no tongue left.