Out Cold (13 page)

The next morning, Wednesday, instead of climbing into my lawyer suit and heading for the office, I stayed home. At five after nine, when I knew she'd be at her desk checking the morning's e-mails, I called Julie.

“Where are you?” she said.

“Still home. I don't have any appointments this morning, right?”

“So?”

“There's something I've got to do,” I said. “I'll be in after lunch. Do you have a copy of yesterday's phone log in front of you?”

“Right here in my computer. Hang on…okay. I'm looking at it now.”

“The young woman who called three times, wouldn't leave her name?”

“Yes,” said Julie. “What about her?”

“What time was the first call she made?”

“Ten-thirty-five in the morning.”

“And it was from indoors, you told me, right?”

“That's right,” she said. “She was inside a restaurant. Restaurant sounds are quite distinctive.”

“Tell me what you remember about those sounds.”

“Muffled voices. I couldn't distinguish any words. Plates and cups and saucers clinking together. Um, music, too. In the background. Soft music. It was barely audible.”

“What kind of music?”

Julie was silent for a minute. Then she said, “Plucked strings. And a flute. Minimalist music in a minor key. Sort of spooky. Haunting, you know?” She paused. “Asian. It was that Asian, New-Agey type of music that goes on and on, no beginning, middle, or end. They play that kind of music at the spa where I get my nails done. It's supposed to be soothing.”

After I hung up with Julie, I tried Misty's cell phone. Got her voice mail. Declined to leave another message.

 

I left the house a little after nine-thirty. It was one of those mythic January-thaw days that come along once every three or four years in Boston, and when it does, it's usually in February. For a day or two, the sun blazes out of a cloudless blue sky and the temperature soars into the fifties. Snowpiles shrink, sending miniature trout streams flooding down the sides of hilly streets, and the world, as e.e. cummings observed, is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.

It's a cruel illusion, of course. Cold fronts and northeasters and ice storms inevitably come surging in behind January thaws.

There were no goat-footed balloonmen whistling far and wee on the Common, nor did I notice any on Boylston Street after I crossed Tremont at the Dunkin' Donuts where I'd waited for Misty the previous evening. I turned right onto Washington, then took a left onto Beach Street—and suddenly, as they say, I was in a whole nother world.

Boston's Chinatown is compressed into ten or a dozen irregular city blocks between the Common and the waterfront. It's a rough rectangle bounded by Washington, Boylston, Purchase, and Kneeland streets. Part of one block is taken up by the Registry of Motor Vehicles building, and it's partly bordered on the Kneeland Street side by the New England Medical Center.

Chinatown is all about food. There are close to fifty restaurants, mostly Chinese but a scattering of Vietnamese, Cambodian, Japanese, and Korean. There are markets with plucked chickens hanging in the windows and fresh fish laid out on ice, bakeries, greengrocers, fast-food noodle and rice shops, dim sum and sushi, Chinese delis.

There are herbal-medicine shops and book shops and souvenir shops, too, and massage parlors and acupuncture parlors and palm-reading parlors.

But mostly, Chinatown is about food.

I strolled slowly down Beach Street with my jacket open and my face turned up to the warm sun, savoring the January thaw. Beach Street was where Misty said she and her two friends—Kayla and Zooey—hung out.

I was looking for a restaurant that would be open at 10:35 in the morning. That's when Misty had called yesterday. That eliminated the majority of them. Most of the restaurants, according to the little signs hanging in the windows or on the doors, served lunch and dinner and opened at eleven o'clock or eleven-thirty.

I crossed back and forth, methodically checking out all the Beach Street restaurants. I went into every one that I found open at that hour. The first thing I did was listen for New-Agey, Asian music. Plucked strings and a flute. Minimalist, in a minor key.

Whenever I went into a restaurant and heard that kind of music, I found a hostess and did my best to ask her about three young women, one of whom was probably Asian, who liked to hang out there.

At the first four or five places, the hostesses had barely-serviceable English. But they indicated that they understood my question, and they denied knowing the girls.

I realized that they could have been lying, thinking they were protecting the three girls. I tried to explain that I was their friend, that I was worried that they might be in trouble. I showed them my business card, told them I was a lawyer, said that they'd asked me to help them.

The hostesses looked at me with solemn black eyes and shook their heads. Very sorry.

The sixth or seventh open restaurant I tried was in sight of the Chinatown Gate near the end of Beach Street. Underneath the Chinese characters on the restaurant's sign were the English words: Happy Family. Translated literally from the Chinese, I assumed.

When I stepped inside, I noticed the soft music coming from speakers. Plucked strings and woodwinds. It sounded like a forest stream bubbling over smooth stones with a soft breeze sifting through hemlocks. It was unmistakably Asian, haunting and comforting at the same time.

The hostess of Happy Family was an Asian woman whose age was impossible to guess. Her black hair was long, straight, and shiny, her skin unwrinkled, her body slender, her teeth white. But there was something old and worn-out in her eyes, and her voice, when she spoke, rasped with a lifetime of cigarettes and disappointments.

She told me her name was Bonnie. She spoke flawless English, if you consider an East Boston accent flawless…which I do.

She asked if I wanted a table.

I told her I just wanted to ask her some questions.

Her eyes slid away from mine. “What kind of questions?” she said.

“I wonder if you know three young women,” I said. “Misty, Zooey, and Kayla are their names. Or at least those are their, um, professional names. Pretty girls, maybe twenty? One's a brunette, one's blond, and one's Asian.”

“Who are you?” she said.

I said I was a lawyer and gave her one of my cards.

She looked at it, then she looked up at me and nodded. “What can I do for you?”

“I'm worried that one of these girls—or maybe all three of them—might be in trouble.”

Bonnie looked at me for a long moment, measuring me, it seemed, with her dark eyes. Then she nodded. “What about some tea?”

I smiled. “Sure. Tea would be nice.”

She gestured toward a table by the front window. The place was entirely empty of patrons.

I sat down. She disappeared.

She was back a minute later with a teapot and a platter of little pastries. She poured some tea for each of us in little cups without handles, then sat across from me.

I took a sip. It tasted smoky. I told Bonnie I liked it. Then I asked her what she could tell me about Misty, Zooey, and Kayla.

“Hookers, I assume,” she said. “Nice kids. They're here a lot. They like to sit over there.” She gestured toward an L-shaped corner booth. “Talking on their cell phones, sometimes all three of them talking at once. Doing business. They have tea, rice cakes, now and then a bowl of sweet-and-sour soup. Sometimes they're here—or one or two of them are, anyway—all day, all evening until we close. We don't mind. They behave, keep it quiet, dress nice. Classy kids. Always leave a tip.”

“They're here a lot, you said.”

She shrugged. “Two or three times a week. I think they have a few other places they hang out.”

“What about yesterday?” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “All three of them were here in the morning. Came in around nine-thirty. They were having some kind of argument. They left after an hour or so. A few hours later—I didn't notice the time, but it was after the lunch hour—the brunette and the Japanese girl came back.”

“Misty and Zooey,” I said.

She smiled. “Yes.”

“What about the blond? Kayla?”

Bonnie shook her head. “She didn't come back with them.”

“How about later? Did Kayla ever show up?”

“No. I haven't seen her since yesterday morning when all three of them were here.”

“When Misty and Zooey came back after lunchtime, how long did they stay?”

“Most of the afternoon. They were still arguing.”

“Could you tell what they were arguing about?”

“Not really. It was one of those quiet arguments. Didn't raise their voices, didn't bang around. The two of them, sitting there across from each other, leaning over the table with their faces close together, very serious. Didn't seem exactly angry, but you could see by their expressions and their body language they were tense, upset. At first I didn't even realize they were upset with each other. Then suddenly Zooey slides out of the booth. She starts to leave, then she turns around as if she forgot something. She marches back to the table, bends over so she's right in Misty's face, and she says something and shakes her finger at her.”

“She shook her finger?” I said.

Bonnie lifted her hand, made a little fist, stuck out her index finger, and shook it at me.

“Did you overhear anything at all?” I said. “A word, a phrase, a name?”

Bonnie stared down into her teacup for a moment. Then she looked up at me. “It was about Kayla,” she said. “She'd done something and Misty was worried about her, thought they should do something. Zooey disagreed. Said it was none of their business. That's what I thought at the time, anyway.”

“Any idea why they were worried about Kayla?”

“No.”

“Or what it was Misty wanted to do that Zooey disagreed with?”

She shook her head. “I really didn't hear more than a word or two of what they said. I wasn't trying to listen. It was none of my business.”

“So Zooey left?”

“Yes. After she—she shook her finger—she marched out.”

“And didn't come back?”

Bonnie shook her head. “Haven't seen her since then.”

“What time was it that she left?”

She looked up at the ceiling for a moment. “Middle of the afternoon sometime, I think. I didn't really notice.”

“What about Misty?” I said. “When was the last time you saw her?”

“Misty?” Bonnie narrowed her eyes and looked up at the ceiling for a minute. “We were starting to get the early dinner crowd. It got busy, and I wasn't paying too much attention to Misty. She was over there in their usual booth, pot of tea, working the phone. Then, next time I looked over, she was gone.”

“Do you think you could pin down a time?”

“Five-thirty? Could've been closer to six.” She shrugged.

“Have you seen any of them since then?” I said. “Later last night or this morning?”

“No.”

“I'm interested in a certain panel truck,” I said. “It's got a logo painted on its side. Bears. A big one and a little one.”

“Bears?” she said. “What kind of bears?”

I took a pen from my pocket, and sketched on a napkin—crudely—the bear logo as I remembered it. I showed it to Bonnie. “They're sort of generic bears. Mother and cub, probably. The truck has New Hampshire license plates.”

She looked at my sketch. She seemed to be fighting back a smile. “Those are bears?”

I shrugged.

“I don't remember seeing any truck with bears on it,” she said.

“Did you know Sunshine?”

She frowned.

“Her real name was Maureen Quinlan. She was homeless. They called her Sunshine.”

Bonnie blinked. Then she nodded. “Okay, I know who you mean. The poor woman who was murdered. She—they found her body not far from here a few days ago. Behind the Moon Garden over on Tyler Street. Is that who you mean?”

“Yes. You didn't know her, then?”

“No. I don't think she hung around here. What I heard, she probably wandered into somebody's territory, they took exception to it.”

“They killed her for being in the wrong place?”

“They've got all the Dumpsters staked out,” she said. “You better not go dipping into somebody else's Dumpster.”

“Did you hear anything else?”

“About…Sunshine?”

“Yes.”

Bonnie gazed up at the ceiling. Either she was trying to remember, or else she was trying to appear to be trying to remember.

“No,” she said. “There hasn't been much talk about it, at least among the people who talk to me. Homeless people die in alleys.” She shrugged.

I had thought to bring Dana Wetherbee's morgue photo with me. I took it from my shirt pocket and put it on the table in front of Bonnie. “Do you recognize her?”

She frowned at the picture, then looked up at me. “She's dead, isn't she?”

“Yes.”

“I don't recognize her.”

“You've never seen her?”

“I didn't say that. I might have seen her. But if I did, I don't remember. I don't recall her face. Who is she?”

“She died in an alley, too.”

She sighed. “Oh, dear.”

“Yes,” I said.

“And this girl,” she said, tapping Dana's photo with her fore-finger, “is connected to Misty and the other two girls…how?”

“I don't know,” I said.

“You think Misty and Zooey and Kayla?…”

“I hope not,” I said.

Bonnie looked at me for a long moment. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“What's your interest in these girls?” she said. “I mean, you're a lawyer…”

“Misty called me yesterday,” I said. “I think she was calling from here. She wanted to talk to me. Left several messages. We didn't connect till later in the afternoon. I agreed to meet her at six at the Dunkin' Donuts on the corner of Tremont and Boylston. She never showed up. I tried calling her cell a few times, but she didn't answer.” I shrugged. “I'm worried about her.”