Ceremony (3 page)

"No other friends?" I said.

They all shook their heads again, except Hummer, who was still trying to get his arm loose. I let him succeed. All of them were quiet. Hummer sat with his head down, rubbing his arm.

"You think you're pretty tough, huh?" he said. "Come out and push around a bunch of kids."

"I am pretty tough, Hummer. But not because I pushed you around. l pushed you around because I had to. There's people can push me around. Nothing to be ashamed of."

Hummer didn't look up. None of the other kids looked at him. There was nothing else to say. I walked away, back toward the center of town, where I'd left my car. On the way I looked for a puppy to kick.

There were seven people Gurwitz listed in the Boston telephone directory. None of them was Amy. I called all the numbers and none of them ever heard of Amy. There was one Gurwitz listed in the Smithfield book. I called them. Mrs. Gurwitz didn't know where Amy lived, and didn't know her phone number, and hadn't heard from her since she had left and didn't want to.

"I got three others to think about, mister," she told me on the phone. "And the farther away she stays from them, the better I'll like it. Her sister made honor roll last quarter."

"Any of the kids know how to get in touch with her?"

"They'd better not, and you better not get them involved with her again either."

"No, ma'am," I said. "Thank you for your time." I hung up and called Susan at the high school.

"The name Amy Gurwitz mean anything to you?" I said.

"Yes. She dropped out last year."

"She and April are supposed to be friends."

"Could be. They were both sort of lost, alone kids. I don't know."

"She got any siblings in the high school?"

"I think a sister, Meredith."

"I talked to Amy's mom. She doesn't know Amy's whereabouts and doesn't want to. Maybe you could ask the kid sister. She must be smart. She made honor roll last quarter."

"I'll talk with her," Susan said, "and call you back. Are you at my house?"

"Yeah, you know the number?"

She hung up. I leaned my forearms on the kitchen table and looked out the window. The maple trees were black and slick in the rain, their bare branches shiny. The flower bed was a soggy matting of dead stems. The house was so still you could hear its vital functions. The furnace cycling on and then off as the thermostat required. The faint movement of air from the heat vents. The periodic click, somewhere, probably of the gas meter. I had listened to too much silence in my life. As I got older I didn't get to like it more. A barrel-bodied Labrador retriever nosed through Susan's backyard, its tail making a steady arc as it foraged for anything that might have been left for the birds. There was nothing there, but she showed no sign of discouragement and moved on past the naked forsythias and into the next yard, with her tail making its rhythmical sweeping wag. The phone rang. Susan said, "Okay. Meredith Gurwitz doesn't know where her sister is, but she's got a phone number where she can reach her. You got a pencil?"

"Yes."

"Okay, here it is," Susan said, and read me the number. "Can you find the address from the number?"

"You forget to whom you speak," I said.

"I withdraw the question," Susan said.

"Before I hang up," I said, "tell me something."

"Yes?"

"Do you spend much time at work fantasizing about my nude body?"

"No." "Let me rephrase the question," I said.

"Just see if you can find out the address for the phone number," Susan said, and hung up. She was probably embarrassed that I'd discovered her secret. I looked in the phone book and then dialed the telephone business office in Government Center and asked for my service representative.

The operator said, "May I have your telephone number, sir?"-they never said phone at telephone business offices. I gave her the mystery number. She said, "I'll connect you," and in a moment a female voice said, "Mrs. Foye. May I help you?"

"You're damned right," I said. "This is Mr. Phunuff' -I turned my head and blurred the name-"and I am getting all sorts of mail from you people that doesn't belong to me. What have you got there for an address, anyway?"

"I'm very sorry, Mr. Poitras," she said. "What kind of mail are you getting?"

"I'm getting the kind I don't want and I'm about damned ready to call the DPU. Now what the hell kind of address have you got for me?"

"We have you at Three Sixty Beacon Street, Mr. Poitras."

"Yeah, that's right," I said, millified, "and you got my named spelled right? P-O-I-T-R-A-S?"

"Yes, that's what we have-Mitchell Robert Poitras."

"Well, then, how come I'm getting all this stuff in the mail?"

"Sir, if you could just tell me what exactly you are getting… ?"

"Yeah, right, well, look-Mrs. Foye, is it?-here's what I'll do. I'll package it up and send it all to you. Are you in Government Center?"

"Yes. Six Bowdoin Square."

"Well, I'll send it in and you'll see for yourself."

"If you'd…" and I hung up. Mitchell Poitras, 360 Beacon Street. I probably could have got Cataldo to get the address for me, or Frank Belson in Boston, but it's always good to know you can still do it on your own if you need to. It was a lot better than bullying a seventeenyear-old kid. Ma Bell was a worthy opponent.

Three Sixty Beacon would be somewhere around Fairfield or Gloucester. Condos: walnut paneling, skylights, private gardens, deeded parking, working fireplaces, gourmet kitchens. Amy had not lowered her standard any by moving in with Mitchell Poitras.

It was raining harder as I drove into Boston. The convertible roof on my MG was aging and some of the snaps were gone. Water leaked inoffensively around the snapless gaps and trickled amiably down the doorframe. Might as well save Amy Gurwitz, too, while I was in the neighborhood. They could make honor roll together. I couldn't ever remember making honor roll. Probably why my roof leaked.

There are few city places handsomer than Back Bay, Boston. The long rows of brick town houses with their idiosyncratic rooflines and their black iron fences out front marched along the dead-flat landfill streets from the Common to Kenmore Square in parallel with the river. There were brownstone fronts, and occasionally gray granite fronts, and, rarely, marble fronts. But the dominant impression of these three- and four- and five-story contiguous buildings was red brick, softened by age and glazed with the cold November rain. There were trees and shrubs, and flower beds in the minuscule front yards. They were somber and wet now, but on summer days they frolicked with color and growth. Even in a cold wet rain, with the day getting darker, it was very nice there. Almost all the dog droppings were in the gutter. Three eighty-three was just past Fairfield, on the left, with a low wrought-iron picket fence and a gate. What was probably a magnolia tree stood in dark outline waiting for the spring. Three granite steps led to the doorway. There were double glass doors, and past them a small foyer with flagstone floor and a white wooden door with raised panels. I rang. Water dripped off the slate roof three stories up. The inside door opened and a women looked at me through the glass of the outer doors. She wore an ankle-length long-sleeved black dress with white fur cuffs and white fur at the collar. Her hair was blonder than a lemon and done in a mass of curls that overpowered her small face. Her nails were painted red, her eyes were shadowed, her lips were glossy crimson. She had large rings on each finger of each hand. The ringless thumbs seemed underdressed. As she stepped toward me her split skirt fell apart, showing high black boots with very high spiked heels. She opened one of the glass doors.

"Yes?"

Her face was startling. The rest of her was so noisy that you didn't pay much attention to her face until your nerves calmed a little. Up close her face was maybe sixteen years old. Behind the eye shadow and mascara and lip gloss and blusher and things I didn't know the name of was a barely formed sixteen-year-old face. She smiled inquiringly when she said yes and I noticed she had a space between her front teeth.

I said, "My name's Spenser. I'm looking for Amy Gurwitz."

"Why do you want to see her?" the girl said. Her voice

went with her face. It was a voice for saying, Oh, wow! and Far out! It was a voice to be raised in praise of rock musicians. She spoke carefully with her little voice, and slowly, as if nothing she said came easy to her. "Because her friend, April Kyle, is in some trouble, and I'm trying to find April so I can help her."

The rain continued to drip off the roof, splashing into a puddle that had formed in the hard dirt where the base of the granite steps met the foundation of the house. The girl bit her lower lip, moving her lower jaw so that the lip scraped slowly across the edge of her top teeth. When it scraped free, she did it again.

Finally, after cycling the lower lip past the upper teeth five or six times, she said, "Won't you come in, please?"

I said, "Thank you," and in we went.

There was a hallway with stairs along the left wall leading up. A doop on the right wall, another door past the stairs. A large oil pinting with romanticized mountains in it hung on the wall next to the right-hand door. The only other thing in the hall was a brass umbrella stand with maybe five umbrellas in it. They didn't look as if they'd ever been used. They were for show. Like a breast-pocket hankie. We went straight back past the stairs and through the door at the end of the hall. Then down three stairs to the living room. At the far end of the living room French doors opened out onto a patio. On the right-hand wall a large marble-faced fireplace, above it another picture of purple mountain's majesty. In the left corner was a bar, directly beside the step down, and in between the bar and the French doors were several beige armchairs and a large beige couch. The walls were beige, the carpet was beige. The woodwork was walnut.

"Won't you sit down?" She gestured carefully at the sofa.

"Thank you." I sat on the sofa.

"Would you care for a drink?"

Was it legal for a child to serve beer to a consenting adult in the privacy of her home? What if the Alcoholic Beverage Commission had the place bugged? There was one way to find out.

"I'll take a beer if you have one," I said.

If she was an agent, undercover for ABC, I could claim entrapment.

"Certainly," she said. "Excuse me." She walked behind the bar and bent over. I heard a door open. She stood up with a bottle of Molson Golden Ale. She found an opener, popped the top, reached under her bar, came up with a beer mug, poured the beer into the glass, taking her time, trying to get the whole bottle into the mug without overflowing the foam. When she had it full to the brim and the bottle was empty, she put the bottle out of sight, put the mug on a little walnut tray, and brought it to me. From a drawer in the coffee table she took out a coaster, put the coaster in front of me, and carefully put the beer on the coaster. She smiled again and then brought the tray back and put it out of sight behind the bar. She then came back and sat down in one of the armchairs across from me and crossed her legs, smoothing her skirt over her thighs.

"I am Amy Gurwitz," she said.

I picked up my beer mug, carefully so as not to spill, and took a small sip. I didn't dare guzzle it-she'd think she had to get me another one and that would kill the afternoon.

"Do you know where April Kyle is?" I said.

She frowned slightly, and I knew she was trying to think. "May I ask why you wish to know?" Amy said. Her hands were folded still in her lap. She had her head tilted delicately so that she seemed to be looking down over her cheekbones at me. Elegant.

"Her parents think she's become a prostitute, and they are worried about her."

"You a cop… policeman?"

"I am a private detective," I said.

She raised her eyebrows and smiled. "Oh, isn't that interesting."

I nodded and sipped a little more beer. She smiled at me.

"Are you thinking?" I said.

"Excuse me?"

"Are you thinking about my question?"

"Oh… No."

"Can you put me in touch with April? Do you know where she is?"

She smiled again, the apex of courtesy. "No, I'm terribly sorry. I don't know where April is."

I didn't get a ring of sincerity in her voice. Or insincerity. I didn't hear the ring of anything in her voice. She was like a kid playacting. Playing grown-up. She offered me a filter-tipped cigarette from a box on the coffee table. I said, "No, thank you."

She said, "Do you mind if I smoke?"

I said, "No."

She lit her cigarette with a big silver table lighter.

"Would you have any ideas on where I might look for April?" I said.

Amy held her cigarette carefully out near the fingertips of her index and middle fingers. She inhaled and exhaled, carefully blowing the smoke away from me. "Gracious, I really couldn't say. I haven't seen April since I moved from Smithfield."

I nodded. "You think she might be a whore?" I said.

"Oh, I hope not. She was always so nice. I don't think she'd do that."

"Do you live here with Mitchell Poitras?"

She smiled and shook her head vaguely. It was neither a negative nor affirmative movement-it was something in between, an avoidance gesture.

"Do you work?"

"I'm at home just now," she said. Her eyes were shallow and meaningless as she spoke. Her smile was polite. She looked like a Barbie doll.

"So who pays the rent?"

She made her vague head movement again and smoked some more of her cigarette.

"What does Mitchell do for a living?" I said.

She looked up at the clock. "I really must be starting my dinner pretty soon. I'm afraid you'll have to excuse me." She stood. I was being outclassed by a sixteenyear-old girl. Should I give her the famous Spenserian arm squeeze? Or I could shoot her. I said, "Okay, thanks for your time." I took a card from my shirt pocket and gave it to her. "If you should hear from April, could you give me a call?" She put the card on the coffee table and walked in stately cadence to the door and opened it. She smiled. I smiled. I went out. She shut the door. I turned up my coat collar and walked to my car. The small rain still fell.