Right To Die - Jeremiah Healy (28 page)

As Roja closed the door behind the three of us,
Andrus stepped by me, hugging herself against the night wind. Tugging
on my gloves, I heard a flat crack and, just over my head, a sound
like someone whistling in water.

Glass shattered as I tackled Andrus, shoving her
behind the engine block of the closest car. Roja was already crawling
behind me as another flat crack came from across the street and high.
The mailbox next to the front door of the house clanged on its
screws. The first bullet had gotten the imitation gas lamp over the
doorway. Andrus pushed herself to her knees and said, "What the
hell is...”

"Shut up and stay down."

Roja said shakily, "We are being shot."

The rooflines across the street seemed even and
empty. No silhouette, no muzzle flash.

I took a quick look at Roja, but didn't see any
blood. "Inés, are you all right?"

She shifted her weight, one leg on a snowbank, the
other on the icy cement. "Yes. Can you see anything?"

"No."

Andrus said very quietly, "Are you going to
shoot back?"

Looking down at the revolver in my bare right hand, I
couldn't recall taking off my glove or drawing the gun. "Not
from this angle. I might go through a window or throw one high and
over to another street or building."

Andrus faced her house. "Shouldn't we call the
police?"

Eight feet separated us from the locked door. "Not
till I'm sure we'd get to the phone."

Five or six minutes passed. I was thinking about the
shooter's aim when a powerful engine approached, charging hard.
Brakes squealed on the other side of the parked cars. A door was
flung open, creaking on its hinges, and Manolo squeezed himself
between two bumpers.

I motioned for him to get down, but he was signing
frantically to Inés Roja. When there were no more shots, I let out a
breath. Manolo rushed over to Andrus, helped her up, and reverently
brushed the snow off her coat.

Roja said to me, "Manolo was caught in traffic,
behind a truck that stalled or something. He saw us from the corner"
— she pointed behind her — "and was afraid for us."

I watched Manolo, who seemed awfully agitated. Almost
theatrically so.

Then I moved toward the mailbox. My shoes crunched
shards of glass from the light over the door. There was a perfectly
round hole in the front of the box, off center but not by much. I put
my right glove back on. Using a pen, I lifted the lid of the box and
looked in.

Andrus said, "What are you doing?"

I coaxed out the folded white paper, undamaged from
the shot. At the bottom of the box, bits of brick from the exit hole
on the back wall lay around a flattened slug.

I unfolded the paper. Headline-sized words again, but
twice as big as the snips from the earlier notes.

"ALL BAD THINGS COME TO AN END CU-NT."

I doubted Roja could read what it said, but she
certainly could see what it was. The secretary began to cry.
 

=24=

"SO WHAT MADE YOU CHECK THE MAILBOX?”

Neely had a pad and pen on his lap, actually taking
notes once in a while. Slouching on the parlor sofa of the Andrus
mansion, he'd visited a new barber since I'd seen him last. The
currycomb cut made him look like a lowland gorilla.

I said, "The shooter threw the second one high
after the first slug already wrecked the lamp over the doorway.
Seemed kind of coincidental that he'd happen to hit the mailbox after
my client had been getting threatening notes."

Neely used the pen to scratch behind his ear, then
swung it in an abrupt arc toward the staircase. "How's this
Andrus taking it?"

"Pretty well. She made calls to cancel things
out for tonight. The secretary who came to see you is pretty shaken
up."

"Minute ago, you said the shooter was a 'him'?"

"Just an assumption. We're figuring the shooter
was the guy sending the notes."

"So you didn't make him on the roof there."

"No."

"You been looking into these threats for what,
about a month now?"

"More than two."

"Anybody handy with guns?"

I'd been giving it some thought. "The Spanish
son, Ray Cuervo, mentioned hunting with his father in the old
country. Louis Doleman, the guy whose daughter committed suicide,
talked a little about hunting too. And Walter Strock has a bunch of
marksmanship trophies in his office."

"How about the other names I ran for you?"

"I don't see Steven O'Brien as a rifleman. And
Gunther Yary of the Fourth Reich says he doesn't believe in guns."

"A Nazi who don't believe in guns?"

"He says freedom of speech will set us free."

"Christ on a crutch. The hell can you count on
anymore?"

"One of Yary's storm troopers seemed a little
more in the mold."

"Don't get you."

I laid it out, including the address of the
storefront in Dorchester. Neely said, "How's about you leave the
Nazis to us?"

"Fine."

He finished scribbling and lowered his voice. "That
guy, the houseman. Manello?"

"Manolo. M-a-n-o-l-o."

"Right, right. Manolo. He was where when the
shots were fired?"

"Getting the car. Supposed to have been stuck
behind a truck."

"Supposed. Why 'supposed'?"

"Because I didn't hear any horns."

"Horns. Like you would if some truck was fucking
up the traffic there."

"Right."

"Stupid thing for him not to think of."

"Yes and no. He's deaf. Might not have occurred
to him."

Neely looked skeptical. "You really figure he
could be the guy?"

"If so, I'm the only one who does."

"Let's hear it."

"One, Andrus pushed over the man who basically
pulled Manolo back into life. Two, he's always around her for the
notes except when she goes off to the Caribbean, and then a note
appears at the law school when not many people know she's gone and
nobody outside the school could easily access the internal mail
system."

"Motive and opportunity for both the notes and
the shooting. But why does he miss, then?"

"Don't know."

"Why does he wait — what, ten years? — to
start at her?"

"Same answer."

Neely shook his head.

I said, "The husband's also not accounted for."

"The husband?"

"Tucker Hebert. Andrus says he was out running
errands."

Neely plainly didn't like trying to keep track of all
these people.

"So opportunity. How about motive?"

"He gets most of the estate."

"If the professor there buys the big one."

"Right."

"Meantime?"

"Meantime, he's a former pro tennis player who
gets sported like a trophy."

"What?"

I explained it to Neely.

He scratched behind his ear some more with the pen.
"So we got a husband who's riding his wife's money either way."

"Except if Andrus were dead, he'd be enjoying it
without her."

"Yeah, but if the perp is either Manolo or the
husband, how come she's not getting notes out in California there?"

"I've thought about it."

"And?"

"If it's either Manolo or Hebert,
hand-delivering a note out there points the finger."

"So the guy could use the post office."

"Without an accomplice to mail the notes from
another city, the postmark would give the guy away."

Neely shook his head again.

I said, "You get anything from across the
street?"

"From the roof, you mean?"

"Yeah."

"Nah. The techies went up. Easy to do, some kind
of scaffolding on the far side. Too windy and cold for the roofers
today, though. No shell casings, no footprints they could make out."

"How about the slugs?"

"They'll run them through ballistics, but don't
wait by your phone, okay? The slugs, one splattered and the other got
flattened by the professor's brickwork. I seen ones like that before
they couldn't do much with."

I figured that gave me an opening. "Homicide
going to be by?"

A grunt. "Nobody bleeds, they try not to bother
those guys. Why?"

"Thought maybe there might be something we're
missing."

Neely closed his pad. "Probably. There usually
is. But then in the end you find out what it was and turns out it
don't mean shit anyways."

"Even so, you mind if I keep looking into
this'?"

"Except for the Nazis, suit yourself. It's your
time and her money, right? Lemme do the courtesy call on Andrus. I'll
let you know about ballistics."

"I'd appreciate it."

Neely lurched to his feet. "Whew, tough day."

Uh-oh.

He patted his stomach. "Yeah, fact is, I been
having the kind of day, if I was to break for dinner about now, I'd
want somebody else to taste my food for me."

I got the hint and told
Neely I'd wait for him.

* * *

"I was hoping you'd still be here."

Robert Murphy looked up from the wrappings of a
submarine sandwich. The wax paper and a diet Coke nearly covered the
one area of his desk not stacked high with files.

He said, "I can't even eat my dinner in peace?"

"Do me a favor, Lieutenant, don't talk about
food. I broke bread with Beef Neely tonight."

Murphy set the sub down delicately and folded the
paper over it. "Just ruined my appetite. Sit, but don't stay
long."

"Thanks." I took one of the metal chairs.

"You okay, Cuddy?"

"Fine."

"You look, I don't know, kind of skinny."

"Been running, that's all. Listen, about that
case back in December?"

"The one you had to see Neely on."

"Right."

"Now what?"

"Somebody missed my client and me with a couple
of shots today."

"Probably forgot to allow for windage."

"Very funny, Lieutenant. Neely seems to think
he's in charge because nobody got hit."

"Probably right."

"No chance you or Cross could come in on it?"

"We take the ones that bleed no more. Area cops
draw the ones that never bleed. In between . . ." He shrugged.

"That's how Neely described it too."

"Besides, reason I'm still here is we're buried.
Cross, she's out with the harbor boys, bobbing for what's left of
some wiseguy."

"What's left?"

"His hands we found inside a Maserati over in
Eastie. Nice Italian driving gloves."

"Back to my situation?"

"Two minutes worth."

"There were some slugs, Lieutenant, but no
casings. I think it had to be a rifle. At least one of the slugs was
intact, but flattened."

"What'd they hit?"

"Bricks."

"Don't — "

" — wait by my phone, I know. Can you do
anything?"

Murphy sucked some diet Coke through a straw. "Not
much. I can see the slugs get the full treatment, but that's about
it."

"I appreciate it." I got up. "Since
this isn't your case, I take it you have no objection to my staying
on the investigation'?"

"Your time."

I left wondering if all
cops talked the same before they went to the academy too.

* * *

"How's Inés doing?"

Maisy Andrus set down the book she was reading.
"Pretty well, I think. She's lying down, sleeping, I hope. The
proximity of all this has hit her pretty hard. I think it reminds her
of being . . . on that boat."

"Manolo let me in. Where's your husband?"

"Tuck hasn't gotten back yet."

I glanced at the clock on the desk behind her. Nine
forty-five P.M.

"I thought you said he was just running some
errands?"

Andrus got huffy. "I in no way have to justify
Tuck's activities to you, and neither does he."

"Professor, I'm tired too."

"I'm not tired."
 
I
let it pass. "Whoever that was today is a reasonably good shot
to have hit the mailbox nearly dead center."

"It's a large mailbox."

"On a downward angle from a rooftop on a cold
and windy night. He wanted to miss you. Us. He's playing some kind of
game, to get you rattled."