Act of God (22 page)

“Half an hour.”

“I’ll be here.”

“Ransacked” was the word.

Tigger watched us from under an overturned art book big enough to form a sort of lean-to, the smell of his litter more pervasive than it had been the last time I was there. The place was a mess, but when you looked, the devastation was only partial. For example, the living room had books pulled down and a lot of things upended, but while the cushions were off the couch, nobody had slashed them open or done the couch itself. All the Hummels and animal figurines were intact on their little knickknack shelves, which told me whatever was being searched for had to be bigger than they were. In the kitchen, somebody had gone through the cabinets, tossing stuff from the shelves onto the floor, but the small, opaquely wrapped frozen goods in the freezer hadn’t been torn apart.

In the bedroom, the open suitcase was on the floor, whoever it was having rifled through it and scattered its contents around the carpeting. The mail Wickmire had put on the bed also was scattered, but none of it opened. The covers were off the mattress and the mattress off the box springs. The closet and bureaus had heaps of clothing in front of them, but no slashing there, either.

Wickmire said, “Something, huh?”

I turned to her. She was wearing the same overlarge flannel shirt, but untorn jeans this time. The strawberry hair shook as she took in the mess.

I bent down to check through the mail again. “When did this happen, Traci?”

“Not sure. I came in to feed the cat this morning about eight, and it was like this.”

“But it was okay last night?”

When Wickmire didn’t answer, I looked up, and she gave me one of her coy smiles. “Wouldn’t know.”

The lilt on the last syllable again but the first time she’d tried the faked flirting this visit. “Why not?”

“I spent the night at a friend’s. I mean, it’s one thing for me to be a neighbor and keep looking after Tigger, and it’s another for the cat to dominate my social life, don’t you think?”

I was hoping for a charge card bill that hadn’t been in the last batch of mail I’d seen. No luck. “So this could have happened when?”

“Anytime.”

“Since yesterday morning?”

“That’s right. I left Tigger enough food for all day Thursday and all night. But I’m telling you, the smell of that litterbox is starting to put me off more than my allergy.”

I thought about it. “The litterbox still in the bathroom?”

“Disgusting, if you ask me.”

I looked at her.

She said, “I mean, sitting on the toilet doing your business with the cat squatting next to you doing his? Come on.”

I moved to the bathroom. Somebody had overturned the litterbox, too, and pawed through it. Or the cat had done the pawing.

Behind me, Wickmire said, “Oh, great, just great. What am I supposed to do now, clean it up?”

“That’s a thought.”

“Why should I have to?”

“Because it won’t get better on its own.”

We went back to the front door. I’d looked at it briefly as Wickmire had opened it for me. Now I examined the jamb and lock more carefully. “No sign of a break.”

“I know.”

I looked at her again.

“I mean, that’s what’s so creepy, you know? I came down here to open the door, and it’s locked just fine the way I left it yesterday morning. But when I walk in, it’s like—I don’t know, ‘ransacked’ still sounds funny when you say it, and ‘pillaged’ is even worse.”

“Anything taken, as far as you can tell?”

“I never even thought of that.”

“Called the police?”

“I called you.”

“And I appreciate your doing that, Traci. But you didn’t report this to the police?”

“No. I don’t like cops. Besides, I don’t even know if I’m … authorized to call. I was supposed to just look after the place until Darb got back, and as far as I know, she
got
back.”

“You’re here most of the day, right?”

“No. I’m in my apartment on account of my allergy to Tigger, remember?”

There was none of the faked flirting this time from Wickmire. “I mean here in the building.”

“Oh. Right, I am.”

“Did you leave your apartment at all yesterday?”

“I left about four to meet my friend.”

“Before that?”

“Just to get the mail. Oh, and lunch. I was on a roll with the charities article, so I ran out and got a sandwich and came back.”

“Did you see anybody around?”

“What do you mean, like—what’s the word, ‘suspicious’?”

“That’ll do.”

She thought about it. “Suspicious, yes, but nobody who didn’t belong.”

“I don’t get you.”

“Well, I saw Rush down by the mailboxes, and he sure as shit looks suspicious to me, but he lives here, too.”

“Was Teagle doing something in particular?”

“In particular?”

“That made you think he looked suspicious.”

“Oh, no. No, Rush just looks suspicious on general principles.”

“You think he’s in now?”

“I doubt it. He said he had a sound check today.”

Teagle had mentioned the phrase to me. “Like a dress rehearsal with his band?”

“Yeah. They’ve got a gig down at a club by Kenmore Square, and their sound has to be right.”

“You know which club?”

She gave me the name, then sighed. “Maybe Wild Bill.”

“Darbra’s brother?”

“Yeah.”

“You think he might have done this?”

“What? No, no I mean the litterbox.”

I looked at her. “The litterbox.”

“Yeah. Maybe if I called him again, he’d come to clean it, look after the cat.”

“My advice?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t count on it.”

The club where Rush Teagle was appearing lay just off the square. I walked in at street level, the linoleum floor sticky from beer and worse. The bar ran along the right wall, a dozen or so college kids and construction workers sitting in clumps of two or three, having a late lunch and a couple of drafts to wash it down. When I asked the barkeeper for Teagle, she said she’d never heard of him. Then I said he was in a band. The keep nodded and said, “Try downstairs.”

The stairway was dark, the basement darker still, so much so that I had trouble making out the pony bar that would be directly below the one on street level. The only lights in the basement were above a man with long, graying hair at a control panel halfway to the stage and against the left wall. On the stage, which was really just a platform maybe two feet off the floor, were Rush Teagle and three other young guys I’d never seen before. One, a skinny kid who might have been Korean, had long hair like Teagle, only braided into dreadlocks. The second was an olive-skinned Hispanic boy with short, styled hair. Number three, the drummer, was burly, pale, and clean-shaven, head as well as face. They made an interesting grouping.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t say the same for their music. It was awful, atonal rock, with no apparent rhythm or melody. Teagle shrieked into a mike as he raped his guitar, the other long-hair more strumming his instrument while the short-haired kid pounded a keyboard and the no-haired kid preferred cymbals over drums.

The man at the control panel adjusted a few levers in front of him and made some notes, then held up his hand in a stop sign. Everybody saw it but Teagle, who wailed for a few more chords before realizing he’d gone solo.

Teagle said, “The fuck’s wrong?”

The man dropped his hand. “Nothing’s wrong. I got enough, that’s all.”

“Enough? We’re only halfway through the fucking set.”

Teagle didn’t endear himself to the guy. “Look, pal. I been doing this twenty-five years, and I’ve heard enough to know when I’ve heard enough. Besides, you’re lucky, there’ll be so many assholes shitfaced in this place by the time you go on, nobody’ll hear you anyway.”

“Oh, that’s real fucking funny. And real professional, too.”

As Teagle glared at him, the older man closed down his panel and walked toward me. Conversationally, he said, “What do you want?”

“I’m with the band.”

“Christ, you ever read that book?”

“What book?”

The guy gave me a disgusted look and went upstairs.

Teagle now had his back to me, his friends starting to break down their equipment. I moved toward the stage.

Seeing me, the drummer said, “Yeah?”

I spoke to Teagle’s back. “I need to talk with you.”

The lead singer turned around. “Well, what do you know.”

The keyboardist said, “Agent?”

Teagle said, “Not. This is the fucker who claimed to be a cop, rousted me in my apartment.”

The Baltimore accent made it “A-parr-mum.” The other guitarist, the Asian kid, tried to sound tough. “Maybe we ought to mess him up a little for you, Rush.”

“Maybe we should, Hack.”

Hack and Rush. I almost wanted to know the other kids’ names. “Bad for business, guys.”

The drummer said, “So, we take you outside, asshole. Management doesn’t give a shit what happens in the alley.”

I looked at the four of them, figuring the drummer as the only real trouble, then thought of my shoulder and knee. “Not just bad for the bar’s business, boyo. You guys make a living using your fingers.”

The drummer grunted. “Some living.”

I said, “Suppose even one finger on one hand got broken, how would that affect your playing?”

Hack, the Asian guitarist, swallowed hard. The Hispanic kid at the keyboard wiggled his fingers until he realized he was doing it and stopped. The drummer just smiled at me as Teagle said, “What the fuck right you got, coming in here and threatening us like this?”

“I thought I was the one being threatened, but why don’t we just call it a draw. Then you can sit down and talk with me a while.”

“And if I don’t fucking feel like it?”

“Then I stake out your place, catch you sometime without the U.N. Peacekeeping Force here to monitor my good intentions.”

The drummer said, “I still think we ought to beat the shit out of this asshole.”

Teagle seemed to be thinking about something. “No, wait. The dude wants to talk, that’s cool.” Lovingly, he laid his guitar on its soft black case. “How about over there?”

I met him at the darkened bar, no stools for sitting. As I looked around the room, I couldn’t see any place to sit, just stand-up counters at elbow height for setting down drinks.

“So man, what’s up now?”

Teagle was silhouetted by the stage spots, so I couldn’t see his face clearly, but the voice told me he was grinning. I couldn’t quite understand the change in his attitude.

As the other three dealt with their equipment, I said, “Why can’t you just leave things there for tonight?”

“Huh?”

“Your instruments and stuff. Why do you have to take everything down?”

“Oh. Coupla other groups are playing tonight. Gotta give them the chance for sound checks, too.”

“Battle of the bands?”

“Huh?”

“You guys in a contest?”

“Oh. Not. Tonight’s like an audition night.”

“But the place already hired you, right?”

“Not exactly. It’s more like we auditioned with a tape. That’s how you do it now, drop off a tape so the houseman or the owner—”

“Houseman?”

“The asshole was working the console over there. A club’ll have three, four groups come in from their tapes, and everybody gets to play a set. There’s a Sox game tonight, so they’ll start early, get people in the mood. But we’re the best, ’cause we’re an original band.”

“Not a copy.”

“Right. The other guys, they’re just cover bands. They play like the top-forty songs.”

“Instead of their own music.”

“Right, right. I don’t write it, we don’t play it.”

Teagle was being awfully cooperative, almost as if he wanted my help in return.

I said, “I have a few more questions for you.”

“Like ask away, man.”

“You seen Darbra since I talked with you last?”

“Uh-unh.”

“Heard from her?”

“Not even a note.”

I watched him, my eyes adjusting enough to the light to see his now. They seemed eager.

“Did you see anybody out of the ordinary in the building yesterday?”

“The building?”

“Where you live.”

“Oh. No, man. Ran into, let’s see, Traci, some guy on Social Security looks like the next good breeze’ll finish him. … That’s about it.”

“Traci the one who told you I wasn’t a cop?”

“She mentioned it, yeah.”

“How about last night?”

“Thursday? I was out with my band. How come?”

“Somebody went through Darbra’s apartment sometime yesterday or last night.”

He seemed genuinely surprised. “How do you know?”

“They tossed the place.”

“No shit.” Something else moved behind Teagle’s eyes. “What’d they get?”

“I don’t know if they got anything.”

“What do the cops say?”

Teagle was definitely as interested in this as I was, and I didn’t get the feeling he was acting. “You know any reason somebody’d toss her apartment?”

“Not me, man.”

“Somebody with a key.”

A smile. “Same answer. Not me, man. Get it?”

“I get it.”

“So, anything else you got to ask me?”

“Not just now. You guys aren’t touring in the near future, are you?”

“Touring.” A laugh, the kind I remembered coming from me when an older relative at a holiday might make a joke he thought I’d enjoy. “No, I’m gonna be around. For a while, anyways.”

Teagle pushed off from the bar and swaggered back to the rest of his band, throwing stale patter at them like a bad Henny Youngman warming up a room.

From a pay phone in the upstairs bar, I called my service again. Nothing from Pearl Rivkind, but there was a message from the doctor at the sports clinic. I tried her and got through after only two layers of insulation.

“Oh, Mr. Cuddy. Thanks for calling. I have the results of your MRI.”

“That was fast.”

“I asked them to push on it.”

“And?”

“And they came through.”

“The results, I mean.”

“Oh, sorry. Can you come by sometime this afternoon?”

“I’m in the area right now.”

“Good. How soon?”

I felt a twinge in my left shoulder, even though I wasn’t moving it. “Right away.”