Act of God (3 page)

Rivkind already had a tissue in her hand. “Well, what do you think? Can you help us?”

Proft didn’t speak, maybe sensing that Pearl made the better ambassador.

“Let me spell out some ground rules first, then you can decide.”

Rivkind said, “Go ahead.”

“First, I’ll need my money up front. I don’t care how you arrange that between yourselves, but I won’t be allocating my time so much to the Rivkind side and so much to the Proft side. Second, I’ll consider a call or report by me to either of you to be a report to both.”

Rivkind looked at Proft. “That’s okay with me.” He nodded back.

“Third, I’ll keep going until I think it’s hopeless or until I see a conflict staring me in the face. If a conflict comes up, I have permission from both of you to stay with one side of the case and tell the other good-bye.”

That seemed to give Rivkind a little trouble, but Proft nodded quickly, and she followed suit.

“Fourth, coming at this from two sides will make it impossible to keep my investigation confidential. Given that, I’ll want you to lay groundwork for me with the people at the furniture store and Darbra’s apartment house.”

Proft’s lips curled contentedly as he and I both realized I’d finally used his sister’s name, but Rivkind just said, “Whatever you need.”

“Fifth, and I think last, since this is an open homicide, I have to start with the police.”

Rivkind said, “I hope so.”

“But, since Ms. Proft’s disappearance is the fresher trail, I’m probably going to visit her apartment before hitting the store.”

Rivkind’s eyes told me she had more trouble with that, but she said only, “Whatever you think.”

I looked at both of them. “So, we’re agreed?”

Final, vigorous nods. As I asked them for the addresses and phone numbers they wanted me to use, I found I wasn’t nodding myself.

I
HAD A DATE
with Nancy Meagher for that night. She’d been a little vague about what we were doing, just saying I should leave my Honda Prelude at the condo I rented in Back Bay. After my new clients left, I closed out the file on the runaway from Vermont, locked up the office, and went down to Tremont Street. It was barely five o’clock, but the relentless waves of summer commuters heading for the subway already had swamped the sketch artists, the New Yorker, and even Fred Astaire.

I walked up Tremont on the east side of the street, the sun still hot over my left shoulder. I passed Dunfey’s Parker House and King’s Chapel and probably the best tobacconist still surviving in these politically correct times.

Across from the curving red brick building called Center Plaza, I looked up to see vapor rising from the Steaming Kettle. The coffee shop under the kettle emblem had been a favorite of Boston trial lawyers weary of battle in the Suffolk County courts, but the shop closed several years ago after the owner died. Somebody still pumps steam through the spout of the kettle itself, a massive copper replica of a teapot, supported over a doorway by steel braces and guy wires. My father used to buy coffee there when Government Center was still known as Scollay Square and an honest cup cost two cents. I wondered where all the lawyers went now that the Kettle and Purcell’s in City Hall Square and Slagle’s on Milk Street had all gone the way of the dodo.

Nancy worked in a unit of the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office in the New Courthouse building. I cleared the Sheriff’s Department metal detector inside the revolving door downstairs and took the elevator to the sixth floor.

She was already at the front desk, a half-moon of oak with a computer, a telephone, and two plainclothes security guys who didn’t take their eyes off me until Nancy nodded.

I said, “All this and punctual, too.”

“I don’t want to miss the preview.”

“We’re going to the movies?”

A shake of the head. “Nineteen questions left.”

When Nancy shook her head, her black hair swayed just a little but never strayed across her face. Which is fortunate, because if it did, you wouldn’t get to see the wide-spaced blue eyes or the batwings of freckles under them or the easy way her lips have of showing you what good teeth can add to a great smile.

“So where are you taking me?” I said.

She clucked her tongue. “Objection, ultimate issue. You wasted that one.”

I walked up close and took her hand in mine. It fit just right, the nails on her fingers cut only as short as they had to be for working the keyboard on her computer comfortably. “Sounds like somebody had a difficult day in front of some judicial officer.”

“A lot harder for the defense, actually.”

“Want to tell me about it?”

Nancy checked her watch. “As we walk.”

Through the office door and down the elevator and out into the passably fresh air, she summarized the armed robbery case she’d been trying. The jury had come back against the defendant the prior afternoon, and given the guy’s record, the judge had ordered a sentencing hearing that morning.

“So what did the defense lawyer have to say?”

“Not much. He was pretty much reduced to arguing that his thirty-one-year-old client had been an altar boy from ages seven to nine.”

“You’re kidding?”

“God’s truth.”

No pun intended. “I guess being an altar boy doesn’t carry quite the résumé value it once did.”

Nancy took my arm, letting my bicep rub against something that felt awfully good under her summer-weight blazer and blouse. “How would you know?”

“How? I was an altar boy, Nance.”

She stopped dead, dropping my arm. “No.”

“God’s truth.”

“No pun intended.”

“You know, I’d been thinking that but had the restraint to—”

She took my arm again. “You really were an altar boy?”

“I was.”

“In South Boston?”

“I was a little young to ride circuit through the outlying parishes.”

“John, I don’t believe it.”

“Why not?”

“Well, you are kind of an eagle scout, but altar … I just can’t imagine it.”

“I can prove it.”

“How? Your age, all the priests you served with must be dead by now.”

“Canonized, most of them. But the way you can really tell if a kid was an altar boy is if he has some embarrassing stories to tell about it.”

“And you have some.”

“Many.”

“I want to hear one.”

“Why don’t we bail out your car first.”

Nancy gave the attendant her ticket, and he let us find the Honda ourselves. Instead of my old-style Prelude, she had a hatchback Civic that was comfortable, quick, and still got as many miles to the gallon as a go-cart.

Once we were in traffic, Nancy started weaving, the little car like a roller derby star. We stuck to the city streets rather than the jammed Central Artery, always mending southward.

I said, “We’re going to the beach.”

“You’re down to seventeen questions.”

“That last one wasn’t in the form of a question.”

“Doesn’t matter.” She swerved around a beer truck. “Let’s hear the altar boy story.”

“One of the many.”

“Any one of the many will do.”

“All right. It was a Saturday morning Mass, the nine o’clock with Father Dolan. Nobody wanted to do that shift, because Dolan was a real stickler for ceremonial detail and the timing wrecked your day off from school, but I was low man on the totem pole, so I drew it. Well, you were supposed to wear dark slacks under your cassock, but I’d forgotten and worn some beige Levi’s that didn’t quite do justice to whatever feast day it was. I knew Dolan would crucify me, but fortunately I remembered that one of the other kids about my size left a spare pair of pants hidden in a corner of the sacristy, just behind the armoire with the priests’ robes in it. So I stripped down to my briefs and was crawling back there to get the spare when a nun walked into the room and screamed. On my hands and knees, I turned my head to see her and said, ‘It’s okay, Sister Regina, I’m just waiting for Father Dolan.’ ”

Nancy didn’t laugh. “Is that a good example of altar boy humor?”

“It was the best I could do at the time.”

We passed the street where Value Furniture would be. I craned my neck but couldn’t see it.

Nancy said, “What are you looking at?”

“Looking for. I got a case in today that might involve the killing of the store owner down here a couple of weeks ago.”

“The busted robbery.”

“That’s the one.”

“We aren’t on it yet.”

“I don’t think the cops have anybody yet.”

Nancy nodded, and I could see the wheels turning toward changing the subject. One of the limitations our professions impose on our relationship is that I can’t talk about any cases that she, or even her office, might end up litigating. It’s a good limitation to observe, especially for her.

Nancy said, “No more curiosity about where we’re heading?”

“South is south.”

The smile of a cat that hadn’t eaten the canary but had just figured out how to work the latch on the cage door. “This will be an education for you beyond geography.”

It was held in a union hall about six miles below Boston, and you could see the whole layout from the entrance. The main part of the room had folding chairs in long rows with a center aisle. Around the perimeter of the hall in the back were some folding tables with paper cloths and paper plates, tuna sandwiches for a dollar and cans of Pepsi or Sprite going for the same. They charged us four bucks each to get in the door, Nancy paying since the evening was her treat. We were given two cards with three-digit numbers on them. I promptly folded mine in half and secured it in a pocket of my suit jacket. Nancy also got a listing of all the items for the night by lot number.

I said, “An auction?”

“Can’t fool you.”

“What are you going to do, put me on the block?”

“Only if you tell another altar boy story.”

“Seriously, Nance, what do you need from an auction?”

“John, have you ever looked at the furniture in my apartment?”

Nancy rented the third floor of a three-family house from the Boston Police family that owned the building. “Frequently.”

“Have you ever noticed the chest of drawers in my bedroom?”

I just smiled at her.

She said, “You were going to say, ‘Nance, I’ve never been in your drawers,’ weren’t you?”

“Not after the Father Dolan story.”

“Good. Maybe you are educable after all.”

“So we’re here to look at bedroom furniture.”

“Among other things. Come on, this is the preview time.”

“Oh boy, oh boy.”

We walked slowly past tables against the other walls of the room with junk on them that reminded me a lot of the tables with the tuna sandwiches. There was red glass and blue glass and broken glass. There were old milk bottles emblazoned with the names of dairies long out of business and old comic books with the cover art of superheroes long out of favor. Ladies’ hats with veils and feathers in the colors and workmanship of the twenties and thirties rested next to helmets of the armies from both world wars. The furniture ranged from vinyl kitchen chairs to lacquered Chinese cabinets.

Nancy had her eye on a pair of maple bureaus, but she shook her head and made a note in her program. Then she spotted a gigantic one in mahogany with brass handles. It stood on curved, carved legs and probably had about twenty pounds on her Honda. Nancy opened all the drawers and examined the joints and tapped on the bottoms. She tried to rock the thing at the top. Didn’t budge.

There were three other dressers. Nancy opened the drawers and examined and tapped, but without the same spirit she’d shown for the mahogany. I had the feeling she was sold, and I prayed God for other bidders to have deeper pockets.

As we made our way back to the folding chairs, I said, “Don’t you think you ought to measure the thing?”

“The mahogany one?”

“Yes.”

“No, that’d be too obvious. Besides, I thought I’d put it on the long wall in my bedroom.”

“Nance, I meant toward it fitting in the back of the car.”

“Not to worry. I have a good sense for that sort of thing. You see anything you like?”

“Just the sandwiches.”

A stony stare as she sat down. “Can you spring for a couple? I want to save my pennies toward the bidding.”

“Pepsi or Sprite?”

“I always prefer an un-cola with poultry or fish.”

I went to the rear tables and decided I should show a little more enthusiasm for our venture. Back at the chairs with the sandwiches and drinks, I said, “Got you two napkins.”

“Thanks.”

As I sat down and she took a bite of her tuna, I said, “You know, this was the first meal we ever shared.”

Nancy looked up from the program in her lap. “You remember that?”

“Your office, when you were arraigning Joey D’Amico, and I was there for the insurance company on the arson.”

Her eyes got soft. “I can still see you that day, even exactly what you wore.”

I thought about closing my eyes for effect, but decided that I liked the effect in front of me better. “You had your hair longer then, pulled back into a bun. Gray suit, just two pieces, jacket and skirt.”

Nancy smiled the great smile. “You know what I thought about you that day?”

“I know you made a pass at me.”

“But you said you weren’t ready yet.”

“I wasn’t.”

“I know. That’s what—”

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to tonight’s showing. My name is Hank Jeffers, and I’ll be acting as auctioneer.”

Jeffers was a round little guy standing on a box behind a podium so that you could see his head, shoulders, and the saddle and sleeves of a loud sports jacket. “There will be no reserve on any lot number unless it is so indicated in your program. Please be sure to read the other rules listed in the program before you bid by raising in your right hand the card with your number on it.”

There didn’t seem to be a sequence to the things brought out. It took me ten minutes of reading the program to realize that items in a given category, say bone china, were sprinkled throughout. I guessed that was to encourage each component of the crowd to arrive early and stay late, the more to see specific treasures to spark their impulse.