Invasion of Privacy - Jeremiah Healy (36 page)

Jude and Kira. "The girl in the car stay long?"

“
Two minutes. Harriet from 41 comes over—doesn't
cut across the grass, either. She walks all the way down the path to
the sidewalk, then the sidewalk till the path to number 44. Harriet
knocks, and goes in as the two girls come out and drive off."
Zuppone glanced at me. "This Madonna, she got a yard-ape out of
wedlock or something?"

"Sick father."

Primo looked thoughtful, then said, "The girls,
they're gone for an hour. When they come back, the one with the car
drops Madonna off, then Harriet comes out and goes back to her place,
path-to-sidewalk-to-path again. I got the impression she's kind of
repressed, you know what I mean?”

"Then what?"

"Then nothing while I'm using a dead branch to
dig myself a fucking hole to take a leak in. Two-forty-five, OJ.
Einstein comes walking home to number 43 from school. A colored woman
leaves his place, goes out to a car's been sitting there all morning,
and drives away."

Tangela Robinette.

Then Zuppone perked up a little. "Tedious shit
till now, I grant you, but all of a sudden, some jungle music comes
on."

"Jungle music."

Primo looked at me. "That rap shit. What do I
have to do, hum a few bars?"

"How could you tell it was rap?"

"How could I tell? Hey-ey-ey, Cuddy, I might not
give two cents for a truckload of the shit, but I know rap when I
hear it."

"And you could hear the music all the way up the
hill?"

"Fucking A. Then a minute later, it drops off.
Matter of seconds after that, Madonna comes out her front door, only
she's dressed different this time."

"Different how?"

"She's just got a T-shirt and shorts on, real
pale legs, and two different-colored socks, blue on the right foot,
red on the left."

"Where does she go?"

Zuppone grinned. "Next door to O.J.'s house,
quick as she can, across the grass."

I looked at him.

Primo said, "Without knocking, his door opens,
and Madonna slips inside."

"For how long'?"

"I made it half an hour. Then she comes out and
slips back into her place. Only thing . . ."

"What?"

The grin grew broader. "Now the blue sock's on
the left foot, and the red's on the right."

I thought about it. "The music's the signal."

"That's what I'm seeing too."

"Mom is gone—"

"—and the coast is fucking clear."
Zuppone stopped grinning. "So, does this multicultural soap
opera shit help?"

"Maybe."

"Maybe? What's with fucking 'maybe'? I sat in
nature's toilet for going on eight hours, it better be better than
'maybe.' "

I said, "You see anything else?"

"No. I left before Mom got back or Ozzie from 41
there came home from work."

"Nothing from 42?"

"Which is where I gotta figure DiRienzi was
hiding, right?"

"Primo, you didn't go down there, did you?"

A hurt look. "What, you think I got rocks in my
head? The feds fucking bobble the ball with the guy, they're gonna
babysit the place, hoping he comes back or somebody who knows him
shows up."

I resisted the temptation to rub my skull behind the
ear where Kourmanos or Braverman slugged me Friday night.

"And that's everything you saw?"

"Yeah." Zuppone folded over the pad, stuck
it back in his jacket. "So what do I tell Milwaukee?"

"What do they know so far?"

I saw some anger rise in Primo, but he shook it off.

"What they know is that number-one son and a
pretty good fucking gun named Coco got on the silver bird Thursday
P.M., called home twice, and ain't been heard from since early
yesterday."

I said, "And your 'coordinator'?"

"He's getting
nervous. Real nervous. Which ought to fucking terrify me, but I'm so
numb, I don't have the sense to be scared." Zuppone glanced away
from me. "Which scares me even more, tell you the truth."

* * *

The Tides was nearly empty on a Monday afternoon, and
I didn't see Edith "Edie” Quentin behind the deserted bar. As
I took a stool down near the end, though, she came through the
kitchen door, a distracted look on her face.

"Lose something'?" I said.

She started and turned, then recognized me.

I shrugged. "Or maybe you were just trying to
remember something?

Edie didn't bite at that, either, before moving past
the raw bar and toward the taps, using a damp towel to clean the
metal posts. Sort of.

I said, "Maybe something you forgot to tell me?"

She concentrated on the towel, her lower lip curling.
"I don't see what we have to talk about."

"How about a Harpoon, then."

Edie reached for a mug. "That's what I'm here
for."

As she set my ale down on the bar, I said, "You
prefer 'Edie' over 'Edith,' I know, but do you still go by
'Quentin'?"

She closed her eyes, let out a breath. "Look, if
all this is some kind of scheme to collect on Yale's old debts—"

"—it's not—"

"—let me tell you, the estate's been bled dry
already, okay? This isn't even my place. I just work here."

"Since you left the airline."

A steady "Yes."

"I didn't come in to dun you for money, Edie.
I'd just like to ask a few questions about your husband and Plymouth
Willows."

"And if I don't feel like answering them?"

"Then I go talk to other people, but I'd rather
get the truth."

"The truth." Bitter, almost a laugh.

I said, "Your version of it, anyway."

Edie slapped the damp towel on the bar like a judge
would a gavel. "Yeah, well, my version won't take too long. Yale
had big dreams and a big Cadillac Coupe de Ville to carry them around
in. He thought he had the touch after developing a couple of dinky
subdivisions further inland, so he tried his hand—and all our
money—on a condo complex that was, get this, 'Virtually oceanfront,
Honey'."

"And things didn't work out."

"Work out? Plymouth Willows sank like a stone.
Oh, Yale kept telling me, 'It's not a recession, Honey. Just a bump
in the road, our road to riches.' " Another almost laugh. "Only
one problem: it was a recession. Hell, it was a depression, and poor
Yale kept trying to shovel sand against the tide he should have seen
was coming at him."

"There were a lot of people with shovels back
then, and most of them didn't see it coming, either."

"Yeah, I know." The bitterness left her
voice. "And to give Yale credit where credit's due, he protected
me all right."

" 'Protected' you?"

"We kept a little house in one of those earlier
developments, took title in my name only, then did a homestead
exemption on it. You know what that is?"

A very quiet "Yes, I do," from me.

"Well, when the walls came tumbling down around
Plymouth Willows, the house was where we could have stayed, nice and
warm, to ride out the storm.”

"But you didn't?"

A labored sigh. "I thought we were. Only Yale
got obsessed with saving his equity in the condo complex—which was
crazy, all the prices had fallen so far, there was no equity left.
That didn't stop my husband, though. No sir, he kept trying to show
the mortgage lenders he was going to come out of it, prove to them
his already existing buyers were solid people."

"How?"

A wave of the hand, which came to rest on the towel,
kneading it a little. "Yale 'investigated' them, in his own
half-assed way. He couldn't afford a real private investigator—hell,
by this time, even his lawyer had bailed out on him—so Yale went to
talk with the people already in the complex, get them to vouch for
him."

I remembered Norman Elmendorf telling me that Quentin
had asked about him at the Brockton paper. "And?"

"And I guess Yale wasn't getting what he needed.
Cooperation, I mean, or enough people with the juice to convince his
lenders. So, instead of weathering the storm in our safe little
house, the man who dreamed big got behind the wheel of his Coupe de
Ville and drove it off that scenic overlook south of town."

Elmendorf had told me that too. "Suicide."

A slight change in the tenor of Edie's voice. "That's
the way it looked."

I stopped. "Meaning you weren't persuaded?"

"Meaning the lenders weren't about to kill Yale
when they or the FDIC could just foreclose on him, the way they ended
up doing anyway. And he sure didn't accidentally go over the cliff
and down onto the rocks."

I pictured the bluff in my head; Edie sounded right
about that part. "And so the incident was written off as a
suicide?"

"Hey, look, what was I supposed to do, huh? Tell
me, please. Yale owed over a million dollars, and if I tried to
contest what the cops thought happened, who would it help?"
Again the bitterness faded. "Besides, Yale was all up-and-down
those last few days."

"How do you mean?"

"Like manic depressive. He'd be down in the
dumps, then figure he had something that might help him, then take
another nosedive when the something didn't pan out. The cops told me
it sure sounded suicidal in their book."

And you couldn't really blame them. Enough people who
lost everything when their own "Massachusetts Miracle"
burst certainly took that way out of the problem. I hadn't touched
the Harpoon, and I didn't want to.

"What do I owe you?"

The almost-laugh. "On the house. I always like
to comp a guy comes in, makes me feel like shit all over again."

Yanking the towel off the
bar top, Edie Quentin strode back into the kitchen.

* * *

Driving to Plymouth Willows, I tried to see a
connection between Yale Quentin's "suicide" four years
earlier and what Primo had told me about Kira Elmendorf and Jamey
Robinette. But while the Elmendorfs had lived there before Quentin's
death, the Robinettes hadn't moved into the complex until just two
years ago.

Going up the front driveway, I parked near the tennis
courts and walked to Paulie Fogerty's door. He opened it soon after
my knock.

“
Where's your camera?"

"Didn't bring it today, Paulie."

Fogerty stood in his doorway.

"Can I come in a minute?" I said.

A blink and a nod. "Oh, sure."

He left and bustled toward the bedroom again, coming
back with what looked like the same chair for me. I sat down while
Paulie aimed the remote at his VCR, the screen showing Bugs Bunny
about to get the best of Yosemite Sam before dissolving to royal
blue. Then Fogerty went to his recliner and flopped into it.

I said, "I'd like to ask you a few more
questions, Paulie."

Blink and nod. "Sure."

"You work around the complex pretty much every
day, right?"

"Right. I'm the super. I work for Mr. Hend'ix."

"Have you seen Mr. Dees?"

"Sure. He lives in unit . . . uh, 42."

"I mean, have you seen him lately?"

“
Lately?"

A test. "Today, for example?

Fogerty just blinked. "No."

"Yesterday, maybe?"

Blink. "I don't know. He has a store too. In
town."

"Right. I've been there, Paulie. How about the
day before yesterday?"

"Before yesterday?"

"Yes, Saturday."

Blink. "I don't know."

Okay. "Have you seen anybody else around his
unit?"

"Just his friends."

"His friends?"

"Yes. Two men."

"Can you describe them?"

Blink and nod. "Like you."

"What do you mean?"

"They were big, like you."

"When was this?"

"I don't know."

Probably Kourmanos and Braverman on Friday, when they
were going in to babysit Dees' place. "Paulie, have you seen
anything unusual around there?"

"Where?"

"Mr. Dees' unit."

"No. Summer's over, so the grass isn't so good.
And the leaves, they blow everywhere, no matter what I do."
Fogerty pointed toward the rake hanging from a wall hook. "But
it's okay."

"What's okay?"

"The leaves. I'll get
them tomorrow. I work for Mr. Hend'ix." Paulie Fogerty beamed
the hang-jaw smile at me. "I'm the super."

* * *

Leaving the Prelude by the tennis courts, I walked to
the cluster Primo Zuppone had been watching for me that day. I put my
ear against the door of the Elmendorfs' unit. Hearing nothing, I
knocked softly.