Now You See Her (12 page)

“Today passé, tomorrow retro classic.”

“Remember your cape in high school?” We giggle, recalling Molly’s high school Saturdays at a warehouse where the clothes,
baled like hay, were burst open so the kids scavenged and paid by the pound. “That Swiss loden cape, I rushed it to the dry
cleaner. It was either that or Orkin.”

“I guess I drove you nuts.”

“I guess that was the point.” We chuckle. “You must see about summer storage.”

“I—” She looks suddenly sheepish as well as guilty. “What is it, dear?”

“I won’t lie to you, Mom. The mink is…I mean, when you come to my exhibit next month, how would you feel if you saw the coat
in…in…”

“On display?”

“Sort of.”

“Then you don’t plan to wear it?”

“It’s a mixed-media thing.” Her gaze shifts sideways. “But it’ll be fun to wear next winter.”

She shakes her head and slips off the coat. “Mom, actually, what I have in mind is—” Her fingers mimic scissors.

“You’re going to cut up my mink coat?”

“Just a few strips. To twine them with the razor wire.”

“Oh, Molly…”

“Oh, Mom.” She looks suddenly forlorn and nine years old. “Mom, I don’t want to upset you. I think this is a bad idea. I’m
sorry. You better keep the coat. I’ll use something else, maybe moleskin.”

It’s one of those moments, swirling with mixed motives, values, costs, high stakes, low stakes, my daughter, myself, our past
and future. Believe me, this isn’t easy. Talk about counterintuitive. “Molly, a gift must be freely given. I’ll never wear
that coat. I promised it to you. It’s yours. You’re an artist, and if your work needs mink strips …” I manage a swallow, pick
up the coat, and put it into her arms. “Whatever you do with it, it’s yours. I can’t wait to see your show.”

Why did the Arnots’ house turn on them? Molly sparks the question. Is it possible that a saboteur lurks on their housekeeping
staff, a maid or cook working on behalf of someone trying to oust them, maybe to force a sale at a low price? Their number
is unlisted, so I get it from Meg Givens, dial the Arnots, and leave a message.

I fill dead-end moments with TV news and the Globe, which are still full of features on Sylvia Dempsey’s murder. The unnamed
person who was questioned reportedly furnished no new information.

I make another phone call. “Are you still stuck on her case?” I ask Devaney. He grunts yes. “Any progress on Henry Faiser?”
My heart sinks when I hear “Not really.” Maybe he’s telling the truth. Or it’s an excuse not to tell what he knows. “How about
the caterer?”

“Alan Tegier hasn’t turned up yet. Missing Persons handles it.”

“So when does Homicide step in?”

A noise at Devaney’s end sounds like cracking peanut shells. “Tell me, Reggie,” he says in his driest voice, “have you heard
that Homicide requires a body? Have you heard of the centuries-old principle of habeas corpus?”

“Never took Latin, Frank. I minored in French.”

He hangs up.

Next Tuesday morning at StyleSmart, I want to ask Nicole again about Big Doc. But she’s eager to plan the fashion show at
the Newton Home and Garden Alliance. The plan is this: we put together the ensembles here at the store, and Nicole will snap
Polaroids for my reference so I can write the narration. Time is short.

We work with a few customers, then turn to the show. Nicole has six StyleSmart regulars in mind as models. “Thing is, Reggie,
this show will cost our ladies lost wages. When you’re only getting six or seven dollars an hour, you can’t afford a ladies’
lunch even if the salad’s free. My idea is, StyleSmart will pay our folks. Our budget’s lean, but this is high priority.”

No wonder my Aunt Jo adored this woman.

Admiration, however, can’t cloud the goal, which is information on the Rastafarian preacher. As always, I first pay my dues.
Nicole is at hurricane force, plucking hangers of jackets, skirts, and tops plus scarves and pins for the show. “Our ladies
need to look confident, competent, pulled together. No wilting violet, no flake, no slut look. Here’s a red jacket for a power
look. And a pinstripe too. We got the pearls. Reggie, check our handbags, would you? How about shoes—black and brown, medium
heels?”

In moments, she’s snapping the photos of a dozen outfits, two for each model. “The corporate look, Reggie. Our ladies need
a business image. You work up the story line and the adjectives. I’ll call Caroline French and tell her we’re set.”

“Just one thing, Nicole.”

She’s caught my tone. She turns. “What?”

“Some information I need.”

“What? Oh no, not that Rasta.”

I describe my talk with Kia Fayzer. “Reggie, you are courting trouble. If you think your white skin will save you—”

“Nicole, at this point in life, I have few illusions about my white skin.”

She blinks. I blink back. “Truth cometh to the light, Reggie, but some things are exceeding deep. Remember the wickedness
of folly.”

“I just want to talk to him.”

“Folly and foolishness, Reggie.”

“Just a few words.”

She shakes her head. “My covenant of life and peace—”

“Nicole, please.”

She rolls her shoulder in a monumental shrug. “His real name is Ernest Frynard. He preaches on street corners.”

“Here in Roxbury?”

“Vanity of vanities, Reggie.”

“I just want to talk.”

As if the words are dragged from her depths, she finally says, “Try lower Washington.”

* * *

For the next two days, I walk past street vendors and panhandlers downtown on lower Washington Street but see no preacher
at midmorning, early or late afternoon. I breathe subway odors from the sidewalk grates and mingle with shoppers passing Filene’s
windows, which feature summer beachwear. But I don’t see anyone remotely fitting Big Doc’s description.

Not until Friday. It’s nearly three, a warm, sunny afternoon in the sixties. The weather has been spectacular. Biscuit is
beside me, trotting nicely on her lead. Stark brought her back this morning, freshly shampooed and full of pep. I’ve walked
her from the South End, crossed the Public Garden and the Common and down Park Street, where two firefighters flush a hydrant.
Wouldn’t you know, Biscuit leaps for the water. She half prances, half swims in the gushing stream before I step in and get
her out. She shakes herself from ears to tail, droplets flying. My feet are wet. The firefighters laugh.

Tightening the dog’s lead, I do not at first pay attention to the sounds coming from lower Washington. The drum rhythms and
the jing-jing of tambourines can be heard from two blocks off. A street fair? No, these rhythms are insistent, driving, martial.
I move closer to see about twenty people gathered at a corner, blacks and browns and a few whites.

Crowd control is managed by a squad of dark-faced men who seem to be in charge. They wear tight black pants and jackets with
silver conchas, like a mariachi band, yet severe, military. They corral the crowd but keep the sidewalk passage clear. Two
Boston cops across the street watch the scene, arms folded, eyeing the corner while talking.

I join the crowd and stand beside a woman in a head scarf. She peers intently toward a mounted poster of a winged bomb and
a black steel barrel lettered “OIL” with a red slash. The drums get louder, tambourines quicken, and a portable sound system
crackles with static. The crowd swells to maybe forty, young and old. Some clap with the drums and tambourines. Finally, in
sync, the whole black-clad squad chants, then whoops, and a speaker mounts a plywood podium. He has a mike and a portable
amp. Yes, he’s a big dark-skinned man in a red robe.

His voice booms through the crackling static. “Merchants of death! Plutonium in the Canyons! Cancers from uranium 238!”

Picking up my wet dog and soaking my shirt, I crane to see. “Cluster bombs! Civilians dead! Liquid gas in Boston Harbor!”
His dreadlocks look like roofing, and his red robe is dark crimson. Didn’t Suitcase Mary say that Big Doc preached about poisons?

“Seizures! Starvation of our people!”

Individuals in the crowd begin to call out. “Hiroshima! Vieques!” cries a man in a football jersey.

“Firestorm!” bellows Doc. “Arms race! Stockpiles of death!” The woman beside me cries, “Chemicals!”

Doc calls back, “Mustard gas! Monsanto and MIT! Rocket gas, parts per billion! Charles River of death!” Saliva crusts at his
mouth. The man is literally foaming. I hear no Rastafarian words, no Lion of Judah or JAH. An oregano odor mixes with colognes,
perfumes, and truck exhaust. Marijuana? I’m not sure. “Raytheon and the devil!”

“Exxon!”

“Halliburton!”

“Bomb the rice fields! Bomb the little children of Baghdad! Ruptured lungs and blindness! Land mines!”

“Say on, Doc!” The mariachi guardians face the crowd and glower. Their silver conchas, I see, are actually bottle caps.

I am close enough to see Big Doc’s face, which is broad with muscular features. His shoulders thrust forward and pull back,
as if he struggles to take flight.

“Cheyenne Mountain! Nuclear winter! Niger Delta poison oil!”

“Tell it!”

“Stealth bombs! Harvard! Tunnels of waste! Subways of Boston! Sewers in the City on a Hill!”

The crowd wails in rhythm, including the woman beside me. Doc’s arm now rises, palm upward, each finger circled with thick
silver and copper rings. On his sleeve, on his front—grease spots. His arm is raised as if to take an oath. The preacher’s
robe, I see, is an academic graduation gown.

“Pox and plagues! Gas! Fuel rods!”

I see my chance. The global and the local mix in his mind, this man so far gone into apocalypse, his opaque eyes on the horizon
of the mystic lunatic. My best chance is this: “Eldridge Street!” I call at the top of my lungs. “Eldridge Street!”

He doesn’t lose a beat. “Fire! Fire of night! Poison flush, tanks of death in the pipes!” His arm drops, then thrusts high
in a fist and glares at the sky. “Suffer the children!” he cries. He punches the sky.

“Henry Faiser!”

“In the flock of innocence.”

“Peter Wald!”

“The blue-eyed boy. Suffer the children. Suffer the rock!” What rock? What blue-eyed boy? Pipes? Tanks? Does he look my way,
or do I only imagine it? Are his words focused or mere reflex? Am I shoulder-to-shoulder with gibberish? Or have I heard a
real message delivered according to the Gospel of Big Doc?

D
evaney comes by to say the partially decomposed body of caterer Alan Tegier was found this same Friday afternoon in Chelsea.
I’m still trying to sort out Big Doc’s toxic shock terms, but Devaney barges in with his story about the body found by two
workers. Off-loading forty-gallon drums of animal fat at a rendering plant, they slipped, literally lost their footing. Three
plastic-lined drums of beef, pork, and lamb trimmings collected from Boston butchers tumbled off the loading dock and burst.
On the concrete were slices and chunks of fat and one clothed body, identified as Alan Tegier.

“You’ll see it on TV, Reggie. I wanted to tell you first.” We’re in my kitchen. Two untouched glasses of Diet Coke fizz on
the table between us.

“So the body was… stuffed in a barrel? Packed in fat?” Frank nods. “Rendered animal fat is used in making munitions. The trimmings
pay by the pound.”

“Then Tegier was to be…rendered?”

“Try not to think about the particulars, Reggie. It’s about disposal of the body. Chances are, Tegier was already dead. We’re
waiting for the autopsy report. I just want to ask you a couple questions for the detectives handling it.” Frank opens a small
spiral notebook. Dealing with this man is, as usual, a push-pull affair. He loosens his necktie, a solar system of planets
and moons with a grease spot on Saturn’s rings. “The night Tegier disappeared, Reggie, you were in the Back Bay and heard
a scuffle?”

“In the fog. It was more like a yelp, then grunting, then gargling. Then something heavy dragged away. Heavy enough to be
a person.”

“This was where exactly? Commonwealth?”

“Dartmouth Street. I was on my way to a nine o’clock appointment on Marlborough. A couple of nights ago I walked down the
same block and saw no signs of what I’d heard in the dark.”

“What kind of signs?”

“Like on the pavement, there were no dark rubber streaks from dragged heels.”

“And that’s it? The whole thing?”

“I dreamt about it, about oozing black sacks.”

“Like trash barrel liners?” I nod. So does he. The notion of psychic dreams is unstated. He sips his Coke, rubs a thumb over
the spot on his tie. Hesitant, I offer spot remover.

He accepts, and in a wifish moment, Saturn’s rings are degreased. He thanks me. “Okay, Frank, then answer this question: what
color were Peter Wald’s eyes?”

“Wald’s eyes?”

“Jordan Wald’s murdered son. Were his eyes blue? Was he a blue-eyed boy?”

He wets his lips. “Ask me the date of his death—March twenty-second. Declared dead at Boston City Hospital at 2:13 p.m.”

“How about his eyes?”

“Ask me what he was wearing—a Red Sox jacket, brown corduroy pants, and basketball shoes.”

“The eyes?”

“Two squad cars arrived on the scene to find Peter Wald facedown on the street bleeding to death from a gunshot wound to the
upper chest.”

“His eyes, Frank. Were they blue?”

“I couldn’t tell you. I don’t remember.” He exhales slowly. “You got a psychic message on this?”

“No. A Rastafarian preacher yelled something about blue eyes. He headed a group house on Eldridge at the time Peter Wald was
killed. When I called Henry Faiser’s name, his comeback was something like ‘a flock of innocents.’ ”

Devaney drinks his Coke. “What you’re saying, Reggie, is you’re going out on your own. Unauthorized. I thought we talked about
that.”

“We did. I went to a rally on lower Washington. I also took a couple of walks and struck up conversations.”

He straightens the tie. “Conversations? So you just happened to walk up Angus Street and chat with Kia Fayzer?”

My neck gets hot. “What is this?”