Right To Die - Jeremiah Healy (29 page)

"He won't succeed."

"He is succeeding. You're upset — "

"I am not — "

"And you have every right to be. He's got some
kind of private agenda planned for you, and I have to try to figure
that out before he ups the ante much further."

Andrus heaved out a breath. "Understand this. I
am upset only by your continuing to think that my husband could have
anything to do with any of this. Or Manolo, as that ass Neely seemed
to imply. Since I am not stupid, I recognize that whoever is doing
this wants to keep me off balance, to discourage me from doing what I
do. I am pained to admit that this evening he was successful. I
canceled a speaking engagement which would have provided appropriate
coverage to the issues I hold dear. I want you to continue your
investigation on my behalf, but I do not, I repeat, I do not want you
harassing my husband in any way. Now, is that clear?"

"Crystalline. "

"I'm sorry." She leaned her head back.
"You're not stupid either. I know that. Will the police be much
help?"

"You've met Neely."

"Yes, but aren't there any other police?"

"Bluntly, not until our friend comes closer."

"As he suggested in the note."

"Yes."

"Well, it will be a while before he has another
chance."

"What do you mean?"

"We'll be going to New York tomorrow. I'm
conferring with the new National Council on Death and Dying."

"Professor — "

"That's the successor organization to Concern
for Dying and the Society for the Right to Die. Then it's on to D.C.
for a few days of lobbying before we fly back to the coast."

"When you say 'we' . . . ?"

Andrus set her expression firmly. "Tuck, Manolo,
and I."

"Professor — "

"Please stay in touch with Inés." She
softened just a little. "I had to cancel Alec tonight, too,
though I'm going to try to see him early tomorrow. Please do whatever
you can to help."

I said, "I will,"
no longer knowing who Andrus meant for me to help. Or how.

* * *

"Hey, John! John-boy, how you doing?"

I was almost at the corner of Charles and Beacon.
Tucker Hebert waved to me from half a block away. He tried to pick up
his pace, skittering down the sidewalk with mincing steps, like a
hockey coach in street shoes crossing the rink.

Despite the crisp wind, a heavy dose of eau de
Dewar's rolled toward me. "I never will get the hang of skating
around up here. Didn't get this ice stuff more than once a decade
where I come from."

Hebert must have seen something in my face. "John,
I hope you're not still put out about that phone call thing, but like
I said back then, Maisy needed the rest more — "

"I'm not upset about the phone call."

The eyes swam in a glassy sea. "What's in your
craw, then?"

"Somebody shot at us tonight."

Hebert tipped forward on his toes and lost his
footing. Going down, he grabbed for my arm just as I grabbed for his
and steadied him.

"Shots? At the lecture?"

I would have asked first if anybody was hurt. "We
never got that far. It happened in front of the house."

"God almighty! I never would have — Lordy!
Maisy, John." Hebert's fingers nearly pierced my coat sleeve.
"Maisy, is she okay?"

"Yes. Nobody was hit."

"Oh, God. Thank — "

"Of course, the shooter wasn't trying to hit
us."

Hebert opened his mouth, but no words came out. I
said, "The slugs went way high. Just a warning."

"Warning?"

"Yeah."

"Of what?"

"Good question. You finish your errands?"

"Huh?"

"Your errands. Maisy said you were doing
errands."

"Oh. Oh, yeah. Well, truth is, I was just out
having a few snorts. All this time in San Diego, I've been kind of
missing some of the places around here."

"Any places in particular?"

"No. No, just here and there. You know how it
is."

"The police may be calling you on that."

"On what?"

"On where you were this afternoon and tonight."

"The police? Lordy. Maisy, she's . . . at the
house?"

"Right."

Hebert let go of my arm and took off for the mews. He
slipped three times and went down once before making the corner.
 

=25=

I SKIPPED RUNNING THE
MORNING AFTER THE SHOTS WERE FIRED, instead calling Inés Roja, who
said she was feeling much better. Andrus, Hebert, and Manolo had left
the house and the city safe and sound. It took Roja just a few
minutes to dig up the only home address I didn't already have,
although I decided to save that one for last.

* * *

The condominium complex abutted the sea, a cluster of
structures four stories high with weathered shingles. I found a
parking spot on the street, not even diehard sailors thinking about
braving the waters on Marblehead in February.

I went through the foyers in live buildings before I
found "Cuervo, R." on a mailbox behind an unlocked entry
door. I climbed two flights to the third floor, Cuervo seeming to
have a duplex condo that included the fourth.

I could hear a stereo set low on a jazz tape. I
knocked, got nothing, knocked again, and heard the slap of shower
thongs on a hard surface. The door opened, and Cuervo, barechested in
tennis shorts, looked out at me.

"What are you doing here?"

"I'd like to talk with you, Mr. Cuervo."

"Ray, please. I thought we had a talk already?"

"Something else came up."

"I'm, uh, entertaining." He sent his
eyebrows toward the interior staircase behind him. "Can't it
wait?"

"I'm afraid not. Somebody took a shot at your
stepmother yesterday."

"Somebody . . . you mean with a gun?"

"That's right."

"Dios mia! Come in, come in."

Cuervo's living room had a view of the harbor through
a glass wall, French doors leading to a wooden deck. He waved at the
sectional furniture around an elaborate home entertainment center
that dominated one of the other walls. "Sit down. I'll be right
back."

Cuervo took the stairs two at a time. I heard just
vague voices, then a door opening and closing. Cuervo came back down,
pulling a rugby shirt over his head, the collar of the shirt uneven.

I said, "I'm sorry to be interrupting anything."

"That's okay. Her night was just about up
anyway."

A shoe hit the floor upstairs, and Cuervo got
serious. "So what's this about Maisy'?"

I went through it for him.

Cuervo raked his hair with his left hand.
"Unbelievable. I can't believe none of you got hurt."

"The shooter wasn't trying to hit us."

"How do you know?"

"I know. The question is, do you have any idea
who it could have been?”

"Me? How would I know anything about it?"

"You told me you and your father used to go
hunting."

"Sure, we . . . Oh, come on, man. You're
thinking I had something to do with this?"

"That's right."

"Hey, lots of kids go hunting with their
fathers. Doesn't mean I'd — look, I don't have any reason to shoot
Maisy."

"Any reason to scare her?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You said last time that you didn't care about
the split on your father's estate."

"That's right. She got the house in Candas, I
got the liquid stuff."

"Any nonfinancial reason for getting back at
her?"

"Like what?"

"Like sexual?"

Cuervo hurled himself from the sectional piece. I
rolled to the left, felt him land, then rolled back, clamping my arms
around his. I pushed his face into the cushion for about ten seconds,
then let up enough to hear him say "Okay, okay. Let me go."

I stood up and over Cuervo as he turned back to me.
He kneaded his left bicep with his right hand, then switched off to
the other arm. I said, "Just what exactly happened between you
and Maisy Andrus?"

Cuervo cocked an ear toward upstairs before speaking
in a low voice. "I was maybe fourteen, fifteen. After my mother
died, I was pretty used to having the run of the house in Candés,
you know? I mean, it was just my father, Manolo, and me when I was
home from school. Well, one day I was coming back after going to the
beach, and I was dripping wet on the tile floor near the staircase.
So I stripped down as I was climbing the steps, hurrying so the water
wouldn't get all over the rugs upstairs.

"I kind of burst into the bathroom, naked, and
there's . . . there's Maisy. Naked, too, just stepping out of a bath.
I was stunned, I guess. Then Maisy looked down at me" — Cuervo
dropped his eyes to the crotch of his tennis shorts — "and she
said, 'Ramon, you're your father's son,' and smiled. Looking back on
it, I guess she meant it to cut the embarrassment, but at the time I
took it . . . I took it for my father's marrying a whore, okay? A
whore who'd make a play for her new husband's son."

"You ever talk it out with her?"

"No."

"Why not?"

Cuervo blushed for the first time. "We don't do
things that way."

" 'We'?"

"In Spain. We don't do that kind of thing. It's
just . . . different over there. You wouldn't understand."

"This scene with Andrus in the bathroom. Is that
why you were so long coming home to see your father?"

"Probably. It was all a long time ago, all
right? Not a real happy time to remember either."

"Where were you yesterday?"

"Yesterday?"

"Right."

"At the plant."

"In New Hampshire."

"Yeah. Where you saw me before."

"When did you leave?"

"I don't know. I headed back here around four,
four-thirty. What difference — oh. Look, I told you, I don't know
anything about the shooting. I don't even own a gun anymore, okay?"

"You said Maisy Andrus got the house. What about
the hunting rifles you and your father used?"

"I don't know what happened to them. I was
thinking about college, man. I didn't care about guns."

"I'll let you get back to your day."

Cuervo glanced upstairs,
then at the clock on his VCR. "Hope she isn't expecting
breakfast."

* * *

I followed Louis Doleman and his teddy-bear hair
through the second door of the spacelock.

He said, "Marpessa? Company's here."

I let Doleman take his seat before I took one
opposite him. The same cardigan sweater and slacks as in December.
The same worn copy of The Right to Die open, facedown, on the TV
tray. I gave him the benefit of the doubt on the cupcakes. The macaw
perched on the arm of his chair, giving me a revolving-eye once-over
as I leaned forward, elbows on my knees.

"Mr. Doleman, I wonder if you can help me here."

"I'll sure try, Mister . . . ?"

I'd said my name for him thirty seconds before.
"Cuddy, John Cuddy."

"Sure, sure. Cuddy. What can I do for you?"

"I'm thinking of doing some hunting this week."

"Hunting? Hunting? My boy, you can't go hunting
this time of year."

"Not here. Overseas."

"It's winter in Europe too."

"Not Europe. Below the equator. It's just
turning fall there."

"Ah. Ah, yes, I remember that. What . . . what
is it you want again?"

"I'm trying to decide what firearms to bring
with me. I wonder if I could see some of yours."

"Mine? Mine, they're awful old, son."

"That's all right."

"Besides, I don't know, I don't think it's legal
somehow for me to loan them to you."

Doleman seemed like that the last time too. Fading in
and out, foolishly inviting a bigger, younger stranger into his
house, then fixing on some detail. Loose to lucid. If it was an act,
he was one of the all-time greats.

"No, Mr. Doleman. I don't want to borrow them.
Just look at them toward deciding which kind I should buy."

"Oh. Oh, sure, sure. Come on." Doleman
stood, waggling a finger at the bird. "Marpessa, you be a good
girl now."

The macaw pecked his finger and made an atonal
squawk, but stayed put.

I followed Doleman into his kitchen. The appliances
all looked 1950s and crudded over.

He paused to move a case of generic soda cans away
from a cellar door. "I keep them down in the basement, of
course."