All in One Piece (16 page)

“My plans are… uncertain.”

“Because we could meet. You could drop it off.”

Chills rise along my arms. A siren blares in the phone background. “What do you… have in mind?”

“There’s a sandwich place, the Buttery.”

It’s a chain. “Which one?”

“On Franklin. Anytime this evening.”

To leave my home, my shelter? Maglia said nothing about this. Suppose there’s a shoot-out, cross fire. I think of Nicole’s
advice to get window bars. “Can I call you back? Can you give me a few minutes?”

“That’s not possible.”

“Ten minutes?”

“Ms. Cutter, I’m on the move. My schedule’s tight. No offense, I don’t want to inconvenience you, but I have to know right
now.”

“Let me think…” As if to think were possible. As if this is mere logistics. But Maglia’s listening in, and a van full
of cops too.
We’ll be there, you won’t be alone
. I could get this over with—clear the apartment, get rid of Alex.

Alex the killer?

“The Buttery,” I say at last, “on Franklin.” We agree on 8:15.

It’ll be dark but not the depths of the night. People will be out on the sidewalks and in the restaurants, which is important.
The transaction shouldn’t take more than a minute. Then I’ll move out as the cops move in.

Do I know the way to the Buttery? Maglia rings to ask and to congratulate me on “handling” the phone situation. He’ll have
me followed. A police detail will be on-site, though somehow “detail” is not reassuring. How about squad? Battalion?

Franklin Avenue is a narrow roadway near the Sears Crescent. Several unmarked cars have followed my Beetle, each one I’m assuming
to be the police. Since cops are all around, I surely can park in an after-hours loading zone. So I do, then walk fast to
the Buttery, a luncheonette with its signature neon butter churn logo and pale yellow walls. Doubtless bustling at midday,
it’s bleak in the darkness, the only sound the slap of a mop on the tile floor and the slurp of straws sucking the last of
a chocolate frappe that a couple in corduroys is sharing at a corner table. A gray-bearded man hunches over a magazine on
model railroading. He nurses a black coffee. Surely not Alex. It’s 8:04.

I order a hot chocolate and sit at the table closest to the door. Outside, a man in a hooded sweat lounges against a light
pole. A stocky woman with upswept hair chats with a curbside taxi driver. Both undercover cops, I’m sure of it.

Minutes crawl. A tourist family comes in for burgers but settles for tuna salad because the grill is off. It’s 8:09. No Alex.
The taxi driver comes in for a travel mug refill, and I make eye contact to signal that I know he’s a cop.

Eight-eleven p.m., and I try to appear calm. The pigskin photo wallet is in my bag in easy reach. The frappe couple leaves.
I sip my hot chocolate. Then the door opens. It’s a wiry teen in jeans, flip-flops, and a lick of dark hair across a high
forehead. He scans the room, stops at my table. A panhandler?

“You looking for somebody?” His eyes are impatient. “You have some pictures?”

“Alex?”

“He’ll meet you.”

“Here. He’s coming here.”

“You R. Cutter?”

Then I know: this is the messenger.

“You’re s’posed to come with me. We got half an hour. Come on.”

Where? A dark alleyway? No, no more of this, enough is enough. I start to say so. But here’s the catch—Alex will run free.
The sting will fail. It’ll be my fault for stopping halfway.

Suppose I go along—to a point. I’ll refuse to enter alleys or climb dark stairways… and the cops will keep me in sight
every second, Maglia promised. Outside, the plainclothes cabbie and woman with upswept hair glance this way. The taxi as a
police vehicle—clever. They’ll radio ahead. Relays of cops will track my every move. I grab my bag and rise. “Okay.”

From Court Street, the kid leads at a fast clip, the
thap-thap
of his flip-flops a constant on Court Square, around Old City Hall, now School Street. I’m a half-step behind up and down
each block. Cars pass, vans, a truck, each one of them pure reassurance, law enforcement at work. I’m slightly breathless.
There’s no chitchat. This kid’s all business, doubtless paid to deliver me on time.

But where? This is the part of Boston where city government meets the tourist route, the Old Granary Burying Ground, the Parker
House.

That’s where he halts, in front of the Parker House. The driver of a curbside Town Car opens the back door. Am I to enter?
No, I won’t do it. The doorman smiles. A bellman pushes a luggage cart. Are they conspiring with the kid? With Alex? Are they
cops?

No, they’re helping arriving hotel guests, an elderly couple with suitcases.

The kid checks his watch. “Made it.”

“Made what?”

“Inside. He’s at the bar. He’s waiting.”

The Parker House bar? I turn to face the entranceway. “Parker’s Bar?” But when I turn back, the kid is gone.

Take a breath, Reggie. A landmark public place, of course I’ll go inside, strange as it sounds that Alex wants his photo wallet
delivered here. To help the police, however, I stroll to the corner of Tremont and School streets and pose for several minutes
rooting in my bag, a woman searching her purse for keys, a phone, a lipstick. Traffic passes, and here on the sidewalk come
two young men with short hair and a broad-shouldered woman in a trim navy suit. Undercover cops? Highly probable. Also likely:
a hefty ponytailed man in a sport coat who enters the hotel. At last, a uniformed officer on foot passes and says, “Evening.”
That has got to be my cue to proceed.

The lobby is hushed and bustling at once. The dark grooved paneling, coffered ceiling, sconces, thick carpeting—all are familiar
though it’s been years since I was here. Parker’s Bar is toward the rear, its stained-glass windowpanes dull in this nighttime
hour. Who’s in the bar? Business types in suits, a young couple, a threesome drinking chocolate martinis. Also the ponytailed
man, my undercover cop—good.

Then I spot him, a dark-haired figure in black jeans and T-shirt and a tight jacket the color of honey. His compact body is
all muscle, and his hair looks wet and spiked. He’s seated at the end of a roll-arm sofa near the glowing fireplace. His eyes
dart left and right. He’s cleaning his nails with a small blade.

“Alex?”

“Ms. Cutter? Have a seat.”

I take the chair at a right angle to the sofa. Mineral water fizzes on the table at his elbow. His voice is just above a gravel
whisper. “Yes, I’m Alex.”

“I have the pigskin wallet.” I reach toward my bag.

He stops me. The blade flashes. “Do you know who I am?”

“You’re Steven Damelin’s friend.”

“That’s all you know?”

“It’s enough. About the wallet—”

The server comes. I order water. It arrives. The ponytail man sits twenty feet away facing Alex and looks at his watch. Is
this a signal to me? To a police partner?

“No, ‘Steven’s friend’ isn’t enough. Steve and I were together. Almost five years together.”

Then it’s certain: lovers.

“I didn’t kill him.” His Adam’s apple bobs. The tip of the blade reams the underside of his left thumbnail. “We had a huge
fight in Chelmsley’s. The whole dining room heard us. And something else, I was upstairs on Tuesday night.”

“That Tuesday.” In Steven’s apartment on the murder night. My bloody door. Why does he tell me this? Ponytail man stands and
strolls out while opening a package of cigarettes. A police signal? I’m ready to toss the wallet and run.

Then I realize maybe we’re not only watched but being recorded, even videotaped. Devices are microscopic. Maybe Maglia wants
me to play this out. The blade isn’t a nail clipper but a pocketknife. “So you were in Steven’s apartment the night he was
killed.” He nods. I say, “The police have spoken quite a lot to me.”

“You’re not their prime suspect. It’s not your ass they’re after.”

“Shall we get to the business at hand?” I pluck out the wallet, which is streaked with adhesive from the tape. Deliberately
I hold it high for the cops to see, to record.

He asks, “Did you look inside?”

“Should I?” Are the photos like that Mapplethorpe art exhibit, naked men? I start to hand it toward him, and Alex reaches
for the wallet. But no law enforcement officer steps forward, no plainclothes, no uniform. At this moment, something in my
mind creases, fractures. Everyone in the bar… suppose they’re just patrons, guests. The ponytail man, suppose he simply
stepped outside for a smoke.

Suppose the police detail didn’t make it to the Buttery before the kid showed up.

On my own. This means I’m on my own with a former lover of my murdered tenant. A suspect. Maybe the killer. A man with a knife.
In this split second, he grabs for the wallet, and I pluck it back. “How do I know this is yours?” His eyes darken. “How do
I know you’re Alex? Alex who?”

“What the f—?” That gravel voice.

“You think I’d come here without an escort?”

“You brought cops?”

“Let’s say private security.” I can guess what he’s thinking. “If you grab at the wallet, Alex, I’ll scream my head off. You
won’t get past the doorman.”

“What is it you want?”

“Start with your last name.”

“Ribideau.
R-i-b-i-d-e-a-u
.”

“Can you prove it?”

He digs in his jeans back pocket and flashes a photo ID from the Jeremiah Steele Dance Company. “You could get work as an
airport screener, Ms. Cutter.”

“And if you didn’t kill Steven,” I say, “who did?”

“What’s it to you?”

Eyeing the knife, I lean his way. “Because I’m the one who scrubbed his blood off my floor.”

He blinks. From pain? Or guilt? “It’s that high school kid.”

“Who’s named—?”

“Diaz. Luis Diaz. I warned Steve. He wouldn’t listen. He got obsessed with that kid.” Alex sucks at his cheek. “Or maybe it
was somebody from that bucket shop.”

“What bucket—?”

“Corsair, bunch of crooks. Ask Matt, he’ll tell you.”

“Matthew Kitchel? At the Apollo Club?”

“Or maybe some pickup date from modeling.”

“Steven modeled? For an agency?”

“In a damn department store window. Downtown Crossing on Valentine’s Day, he was Cupid. Last year he was Tarzan. Modeling
gigs in store windows, every psycho in the city can go after you. Steve wouldn’t listen. We fought about it. Among other things.
But he fixated on that kid, that dumb loser.” He spits the accusation. Is Alex jealous? He snaps the knife closed, then open.
“I gotta go. How about my wallet?” He stands, looms over me. “If you think it’s evidence, you’re wrong. How about this, landlady?
How about give me the wallet and one minute to get out the door before you make your frigging fuss? Sixty seconds, what do
you say? My wallet and a minute’s time before they chase me down? Blood sport, how about it?”

The blade glints between his right thumb and forefinger. He’s about to lunge, I can feel it. I see it in the coil of his right
shoulder, the torque of his hips. With my heels planted in the carpet, I knot both thighs and push off with everything I’ve
got. Please, let this chair be on casters. Yes, the chair gives, rolls back as I feel his breath close to my skin and he reaches
to yank the wallet from my fist.

In that second, I twist sideways in the chair, and it’s so fast I don’t at first see the little Swiss Army blade plunge and
stick. Alex vanishes, but the chair is stabbed like a pincushion at the level of my neck. I pull the blade out, close it,
squeeze the knife tight, and here comes that feeling again. In the Parker House bar, the shapes begin to form, the log to
float in roiling water. And Steven begins to thrash as that twist runs the length of my body from my feet up into my shoulders.
The knife, it’s cut an opening, a passage to the mind game I have to play to win with everything I’ve got.

W
here were you? Where the hell were you?” The voice from outside my front doorstep is pure tight rage. I’ve just parked and
hurried down the walk on Barlow Square. “Where the hell did you go?”

“To get my car, Detective Maglia. At a loading zone. No thanks to you.”

“No games, Ms. Cutter, please, no games with me.” He steps my way in the darkness, his face hard as marble in the streetlight.
It’s nearly ten. He’s been waiting for me. “A dozen officers were staked out up and down Franklin—they waited till the Buttery
shut its doors at nine—”

We’re nose-to-nose on my sidewalk. “I was there.”

“From Pearl to Arch, we had Franklin Street covered.”

“Street? But I was on Franklin
Avenue,
Mr. Maglia. I was at the Buttery that’s on Franklin Avenue.”

His curse is low and short. “
Avenue,
Christ, I owe Duffy a case of… okay, okay… we thought… we called in the blues. Sergeant Duffy remembered .
. . Anyway, when our people got there, nobody was inside but an old guy with a railroad magazine. Now, what’s your story?”

So I tell him the whole thing.

“You decided the cabdriver across the street was an undercover cop, so you left the Buttery and followed the kid? Is that
it?”

“And a man with a ponytail. And a few others too. Check your messages, you’ll hear me from the Parker House the second Alex
Ribideau grabbed the wallet and raced outside. There was no police officer out front of the hotel. The doorman was busy.”

“But you think the guy tried to stab you?”

“Or to scare me. Here’s the knife, it’s in my bag… see.” I hold the bag open.

Handkerchief open, he plunges in with a big flourish and grabs it. “Probably useless. You messed up the prints.”

“Mr. Maglia, the blade punctured the upholstery of the chair I sat in. I pulled it out. I didn’t think about a police lab
at the time. I had self-defense in mind.”

“Skip the dramatics, Ms. Cutter. That’s the problem with a civilian.”

“Civilian” is a double slur on “amateur” and “psychic.” A surge of hot fury fills my chest, my temples. Reggie, keep your
head. Let Maglia vent. Do not embarrass or blame him for tonight’s royal screwup. A killer is loose. You need the police.