Invasion of Privacy - Jeremiah Healy (3 page)

Cradling the receiver against my ear, I said, "John
Cuddy."

"Mr. Cuddy, this is Olga Evorova."

"Yes, Ms. Evorova."

"I have for you the name of the company which
manages the Plymouth Willows condominiums."

"That was fast."

"I told my friend, Claude, about hiring you. She
thinks it was a good idea. Claude then telephoned a banker she knows
on the South Shore, and he obtained the name and address of the
company for me."

"So Mr. Dees wouldn't be tipped off."

"Exactly, yes. The name of the company is
Hendrix Property Management." Evorova gave me an address in
Marshfield, a few towns north of Plymouth Mills. "Is there
anything more you need?"

"Not just now. I'll contact you if I've made any
progress."

"Thank you so much."

* * *

Nancy Meagher had suggested I meet her that night for
dinner and "something different," as she described it,
which was her way of saying she'd be driving and taking care of the
tab. After locking my office and going downstairs, I crossed Tremont
Street and walked north, politely dodging hordes of office workers.
The gainfully employed formed a high tide swelling toward the Park
Street subway stop, washing away clutches of bewildered people in
vacation clothes, cameras around their necks and folded maps in their
hands, trying in vain to find that trolley ticket stand. I passed the
Old Granary burial ground on the left and King's Chapel on the right,
turning at One Center Plaza for an escalator to the Pemberton Square
level.

The still-called "New Courthouse" was
attached to the "Old Courthouse" in the thirties, surviving
a terrorist bombing of the probation department in the seventies and
the failure of most major internal systems like electricity and
plumbing through the eighties and nineties. The scaffolding now
rising up the exterior walls had something to do with waterproofing,
the building creaking and therefore leaking at every joint and seam.
They're about to break ground on a new site, the budgetary crunch on
the old structure so severe the judges have been reduced to bringing
their own light bulbs and toilet paper from home.

I cleared the sheriff's metal detectors inside the
revolving door on the first floor and took the elevator to six for
the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office. I was making small
talk with the two blazered security men at the half-moon desk out
front when Nancy emerged from the labyrinth in back.

She wore full battle gear: pale gray suit, white
blouse with a small ruffle and faint blue piping, no tie, and only
sensible heels. The crow-black hair just brushed her shoulders,
framing the bright Irish face with widely spaced eyes and batwings of
freckles crossing the nose. Then she smiled, and I felt my heart do
the same little jig it had the first time I'd seen her, arguing in an
arraignment session a year and a half before.

Nancy said, "Not carrying?"

I smiled back at her, tapping the hollow over my
right hip. "They're very conscientious downstairs." I
gestured toward her arms, themselves empty except for a compact
leather handbag. "And you?"

"Meaning the conspicuous absence of my
briefcase?"

"That's what I meant."

"I have an attempted murder starting tomorrow,
but the remaining pretrial motions and impaneling the jury will kill
the whole day. So, tonight, no work for a change."

"Just 'something different'."

"That's right. Come on."

We stayed quiet in the elevator, Nancy slipping her
arm into mine once we were outside again. A mime wearing chalky
makeup and a black costume trudged toward us, parodying the walk of
the tired commuter in front of him. Nancy said, "Never liked
mimes."

"Leave me speechless too."

We walked to her car, a red Honda Civic, and she
began driving, the traffic worse than ever because of the "Big
Dig."

Nancy said, "You think they'll ever finish it?"

"Not in our lifetimes."

The Big Dig was what Boston called the attempt to
drop the elevated "Central Artery" (which separates
downtown from the waterfront) and to add a third harbor tunnel to
Logan Airport. The project, thanks to something the late Tip O'Neill
worked out with then-President Ron, began as a two-billion-dollar
effort; I'd stopped reading about the cost overruns when they'd hit
$10 billion the prior summer. The demolition and reconstruction
already had transformed rush "hour" into a 6:00 AM. to
10:00 P.M. phenomenon, and the predictions were for round-the-clock
problems and helicopter shuttles as the city slouched toward the new
millennium.

When Nancy swung into the North End, I said, "We're
not headed for Harvard Square."

"You know anybody who'd drive to the Square when
the Red Line's almost door-to-door by subway?"

"Only you."

A measured pause. "I did that just once, and
I'll never do it again."

"Glad to hear it. So, where then?"

"Be patient, John. Enjoy the scenery."

I looked out the window. Pile drivers, cement dust,
and tarring crews. "No wonder we're knee-deep in tourists this
time of year."

"You've just become blind to the city's charms."

The Civic crossed the Charlestown Bridge by North
Station and another construction site, this one for the new Boston
Garden, the stonework crowding one of the ramps not so far changed by
the Dig. On the other side of the bridge, Nancy turned left and then
right onto the Monsignor McGrath Highway before turning left again
for Cambridge Street.

I said, "Busman's holiday."

"What?"

"We're going to the Middlesex Courthouse."

"Negative."

Continuing west on Cambridge Street, we passed the
Middlesex County jail and court building. A mile or so later, Nancy
parked across from a bright stucco restaurant. The sign read CASA
PORTUGAL. "I hope I know what this means."

"Only the beginning."

" 'Only just the start,' " I sang softly.

Nancy canted her head. She's a lot younger than I am,
and sometimes it shows.

"Old Chicago tune, Nance."

"Chicago being a band?"

I cleared my throat. "Right."

We crossed the street and stepped up into the
restaurant, a cozy, low-ceilinged room that seats maybe forty people.
The tables are small and comfortably separated, the walls covered
with colorful frescoes of what I've always taken to be Portugal. The
former owner sometimes had guitar players and singers perform in
front of the fireplace, but the establishment was always more
restaurant than cabaret, and the music was too much sound. His
successor has members of his own family waiting on tables, the place
pretty successful since it's changed hands only once in the
twenty-some years I've been going there.

The current owner welcomed us at the door and
provided escort to the candlelit table for two in the window looking
onto Cambridge Street. We opened the big menus, but really only for
something to do, since we always have the same entrees there: the
marinated pork cubes for Nancy, the veal marsala for me, both
accompanied by the house's kale soup, homemade bread, and Portuguese
french fries, the last like thick, deep-fried potato chips. Nancy
asked me to pick a wine. After the owner left us, I said, "You
were kidding, right?"

"Kidding about what'?"

"About not recognizing the name of the band."

A smile tweaked the corners of her mouth. "I
don't know what you mean, John."

"Nance, everybody's heard of Chicago. I mean,
they had a dozen hits in the—"

"John, John, I was kidding, all right? What's
got you so touchy?"

The owner arrived with our wine, a dry red called
Imperial Dao. Sampling it, I approved, and he poured for both of us
before leaving with our meal orders.

Nancy looked at me over her wineglass.

I said, "I'm not touchy."

"Is it age or aging or what?"

I told her about Mo and Freddie Norton.

She nodded. "And my kidding around just reminded
you of the . . . differences between the generations?"

"I sometimes have trouble following Mo's train
of thought, Nance, maybe because he's so much older than I am. And I
guess I don't like to think that people close to me are having the
same trouble with what I say."

Nancy took a polite sip. "We're not."

"Thanks."

"Most of the time."

“
Drink your wine."

The bread and the kale soup arrived, nearly
constituting a meal in themselves.

Between spoonfuls, Nancy said, "So, how was your
day?"

"Interesting, I think."

"You don't know if it was interesting or not?"

Nancy and I have developed an uneasy truce about my
obligations as a private investigator to keep client matters
confidential and her obligations as an assistant DA to prosecute
crimes, but I didn't see any problem with an abstract I outline. "A
woman came to see me. She wants a confidential investigation of her
boyfriend-cum-fiancé."

"To see if he's on the 1evel," Nancy said,
very matter-of-factly.

I looked at her. "Yes. That doesn't surprise
you?"

"These days? Uh-uh. One of the other prosecutors
was dating this professor at her old college—somebody she met again
going back for a reunion?—and they became intimate. Of course she
took precautions, but when the relationship became more serious, she
asked one of the state troopers attached to our office to just check
him out. And guess what?"

"The professor was married."

"No." .

"Not really a professor?"

"He'd been her teacher, John."

"Okay, I give up."

"Be a little more imaginative?

I'm slow about some things. "Bisexual?"

A nod before another sip. "Kind of chilling,
huh?"

I had some of my wine. "You ever have me
'checked out'?"

"Yes, but not that far."

"How come?"

A self-satisfied smile. "You'd been on the shelf
a while."

"And out of circulation means safe?"

"John, you just have a feeling about some
people, you know?"

An image of Olga Evorova came into my head, her shy
blushing showing her love but not stemming her concerns about the man
she wanted me to investigate. I didn't envy my client that feeling.

"John?"

"Sorry."

The entrées arrived in hand-turned pottery bowls,
hot and fragrant and just spicy enough on the tongue. And, as always,
too much food.

When we finished, I said, "Doggie bags?"

Nancy shook her head.
"Leftovers wouldn't keep where we're going." Checking her
watch, she brought out the wallet from her handbag. "And we
should be going."

* * *

As we arrived in Davis Square, I said, "The
Somerville Theatre."

"The same." After parking a block away,
Nancy bought us tickets at a window on the side of the building. A
small line accumulated behind us as she got her change and the stubs,
handing me one. When we got to the front of the theater, the marquee
read: SCOTTISH FIDDLE RALLY. I looked from it to Nancy. "A
coming attraction, right?"

“
Wrong. Come on."

On the right side of the lobby was an old-fashioned
counter for popcorn and soda and the usual overpriced cavity-creators
in brightly colored boxes. On the left side were tables displaying
cassette tapes and compact discs with names on them I didn't
recognize. As we reached the doorways leading to the seating, a
teenaged girl in a tartan skirt handed us yellow programs.

I said, "The Boston Scottish Fiddle Club."

"Yes.”

"Nance, we're Irish."

"The cross-pollination will be good for you."

I dipped through the program. "They've got
fifteen, twenty entries on this. 'Reels' and 'airs' and 'marches.' "

"So we'll get our money's worth."

"We'll be here till dawn, too."

"A friend of mine saw this last year and said it
was terrific. Let's find our seats."

Inside the theater proper, the orchestra level sloped
down toward the stage, somebody having impromptu-marked the chairs
with letters and numbers on taped pieces of cardboard. We got to our
row, the red velvet cushions flat and worn as I sat down. The two
couples behind us were comparing culinary experiences from ocean
cruises.

After ten minutes of their small talk, I whispered to
Nancy, "This is what siege warfare must have been like."
She was about to reply—something cutting, from the cast of her
lips—when the lights went down over the seats and came up on the
stage, showing twenty or so fiddlers, sitting concert-style on chairs
with music stands, other instruments like guitar, cello, and piano
sprinkled in their midst. The music started immediately, reminding me
at first of the soundtrack to a John Ford western. Then the playing
stopped for a few minutes, the director introducing the club and its
purposes to us before bringing on four teenaged girls from Cape
Breton, one of them our program aide, I thought. They step-danced
through a loud, lively song—not a "march," but the
theater too dark to read whether it was a "reel" or an
"air." About midway through their performance, I found
myself tapping my foot on the floor.