Good Day to Die (20 page)

“I need to put his life together, and it’ll take me forever if I have to do it a piece at a time,” I concluded. “I was hoping you could give me a boost.”

“I don’t think I want to do that, Roland.” His voice was matter-of-fact, as if he’d thought it over before I’d called. “See, the community’s been taking it on the chin ever since Thong hit the papers. Everybody—the cops, the politicians, the media, the entire homophobic swamp—they just assumed the killer was gay. I don’t want to get into the details, but hundreds of our people were hounded. …”

“That was the profile.”

“The profile?”

“The FBI has some kind of a team that invents profiles of murderers. They give this profile to the local cops and it becomes the basis of the investigation. According to the profile team, heterosexual serial killers kill women and homosexual serial killers kill men. What the cops do is target individuals based on the profile.”

“Does it actually work? This profile?”

“What do you think, Barry? You think it comes with a name and address? Is Thong in jail? Hell, we’d get better results consulting a psychic.”

He laughed appreciatively “I guess there’s no substitute for shoe leather.”

“That’s the point, isn’t it? That’s exactly what I’m trying to do, and that’s why I need your help. I’m trying to take it one step at a time. I’m …”

“Don’t scam me, Roland. Don’t play me for an asshole.”

“I’m not. …”

“It’s a piece of shit, remember? That’s what you told me when I asked you if you had any hope of actually finding Thong. Now, if I were to give you a list of Reese Montgomery’s clients and lovers, you’d visit each of them, right? You’d
interview
them, ask them to provide alibis, demand their life histories. And every time you found somebody with a potential motive, he’d become a target. No, Roland, I don’t think I want to put the community through that for a piece of shit. We’ve already paid too high a price for King Thong.”

I tried to come up with some counter to his argument, but failed miserably. Millstein was absolutely right. I didn’t believe in Bouton’s theory, but I was perfectly willing to bounce a few lives around to get myself out of the hole.

“It’s gonna happen anyway, Barry. It’d happen even if I walked away altogether. Bouton’s the driving force here, not me. And you can put this in the bank—as time goes by, she’s gonna be under more and more pressure to pin this on somebody. She’s ambitious and her career is on the line.”

I could almost see him fidgeting behind his desk. Bouncing in his chair, scratching at his crewcut, shuffling papers. “That doesn’t change anything. Look, I’m not operating under any delusions. The question is whether or not I should help you, not whether I should try to stop you. We’re talking about complicity, Roland.”

“That doesn’t mean we can’t make a deal.”

“Keep talking.”

“Look, I happen to agree with you. There’s no reason to burn innocent people for bullshit. Now, I’m not saying I’m in charge of the investigation, but what I
can
do is keep it light. Bouton doesn’t know a damn thing about police work. She relies on me. If I tell her so-and-so isn’t a realistic suspect, she’ll go along with it. I’m not kidding. …”

“Forget it, Roland. I know you well enough to be a hundred percent convinced you’ll do whatever’s necessary to protect yourself. I don’t blame you, but I won’t help you.”

I hung up, silently cursing my big mouth. I should have conned him from the beginning. Instead, I’d quoted Pooch, the ultimate authority, when I’d used the phrase “piece of shit.” Now, the chickens were coming home.

I walked into the bedroom and consoled myself with my wardrobe. Bouton and I were spending the day in the country, and I’d already decided to dress appropriately—brown Harris Tweed jacket with suede elbow patches; ribbed white turtleneck; medium-weight pleated wool trousers; cordovan loafers (Bally, of course); brown and red argyle socks. The socks, I decided, standing in front of the mirror, were definitely country.

W
HEN VANESSA BOUTON FINALLY
showed up, nearly an hour late at ten o’clock, she wasted no time in making her bad mood abundantly clear.

“The goddamned car broke down,” she announced, plopping herself onto the sofa. “And we can’t get another one before noon. I swear to Christ this miserable city’s falling apart. We’ll have to put the trip off. Phone those idiots at Bird Creek, or whatever the hell it’s called, and cancel the interview.” She was wearing a black suit over a white silk blouse. A vivid tribal scarf draped her right shoulder, dropping across her chest and back, while a soft, wide-brimmed hat, banded in the same tribal pattern, sat squarely on her head. The effect was stunning.

“It’s
Owl
Creek, Captain, and there’s no reason we can’t take
my
car. It’s parked in a garage about a block from here.”

“You have a car, Means?”

“It’s not a crime. Even in New York.” You’d never know it, though. Not with the price of gas, the eighteen percent parking tax, the tow program, the registration surcharge, and the three-dollar toll on the tunnels and bridges.

“What kind of car?”

“It’s a Buick.”

“In decent condition?”

“In
perfect
condition.”

What I didn’t say was that it was a 1968 Electra 225 with a high-performance cam, two Carter 4-barrels and a Hurst 5-speed shifter. Four thousand, five hundred pounds of rolling thunder bearing the nickname Big Pollute. The car was more than perfect. Rollie Burdette, who’d sold it to me in the first place, spent more time caring for the Buick than he did caring for his six kids. It was Rollie who’d applied ten coats of pearl gray lacquer to the aging body; Rollie who’d rubbed down each coat by hand before applying the next. In fact, the only thing Rollie loved more than Big Pollute was his 1949 Ford. Which he called Little Pollute.

Bouton, as expected, nearly fell down when I yanked the dustcover off the car. The look she gave me, pure poison, lifted my spirits considerably, and I began to anticipate a pleasant afternoon. Which is the way it
finally
worked out.

We bounced over New York’s gaping potholes (the Buick was tightly sprung; it had to be to keep it on the ground) through Queens and the Bronx. The city’s annual road-repair frenzy was in full swing, and crews of workers blocked lanes everywhere, slowing us, then stopping us, again and again. Bouton announced her royal displeasure by cursing under her breath at each new obstacle. I tried to make things easier by flipping on the radio, but one look at her expression had me turning it off in a hurry. Maybe, I thought, she doesn’t like Black Sabbath.

“I don’t see why we’re doing this,” she finally said.

We were on the Major Deegan Expressway, approaching the exit for the George Washington Bridge, a stretch of highway notorious for traffic jams. I was in the far left lane, hoping to skirt the exiting eighteen wheelers, but we were barely crawling. Even the Buick seemed impatient.

“You’re right,” I answered. “I should have ducked into Manhattan and skipped the Bronx altogether.”

“I’m not talking about the traffic, Means. And you damned well know it.”

“What I damned well know is that we
have
to interview Kennedy’s brother, even if he is a cop. We can’t leave a big hole in the middle of the investigation. That’s not the way it’s done.”

“Don’t tell me how it’s done, Detective.”

“Somebody has to.”

“What did you say?”

“What I said was that somebody has to tell you how it’s done, because you don’t have the slightest clue.” I gave her a second to think it over, then continued. “What do you want from me, anyway? I’ve been busting my ass from day one. Why don’t you try to imagine where you’d be if I
wasn’t
here.”

“It’s your fucking attitude, not your work, that bothers me.”

Lacking a sane choice (and having
already
gone too far), I gave her the last word. The traffic broke up a few minutes later, as it always does north of the bridge, and I eased the Buick up to seventy. Cops don’t worry about tickets.

Gradually, a mile at a time, the city gave way, first to the shopping centers and used car lots of the suburbs, then to the hills and woods of Rockland County. Bouton’s sullen mood seemed to give way, too. It was a beautiful morning, nearly seventy-five degrees with a bright sun framing small, swiftly moving clouds. Wildflowers blossomed all along the side of the road—yarrow, buttercups, sweet clover, and trefoil so perfectly golden yellow it seemed an arrogant exaggeration, the conceit of some photographer shooting nature through a filter. Oxeye daisies carpeted the open pasture like clouds come to earth; dogwood trees, nearly lost in the forest, spread floating tiers of pink or white petals. Surrounded by towering maple, oak, beech, and hickory, the dogwood had always seemed brave to me, hurriedly thrusting its blossoms at the sun before the larger hardwoods could produce more than a few buds.

“Pull over a minute, would you, Means?”

Bouton opened the car door before I came to a full stop. At first, I thought she was car sick, but when I got out to help her, she was leaning against the fender, a bemused smile lighting her face.

“Would you look at that,” she said.

I followed her eyes to a fenced meadow. A mare cropped the spring grass, while a chestnut foal, a colt, gamboled alongside her. He’d approach on wobbly legs, bump her belly as if he was about to nurse, than jump back with a shake of his head, nearly falling down in the process. We watched for about ten minutes before the mare, followed by her leaping, snorting foal, trudged off.

“Lord, it’s so beautiful,” Bouton said once we were moving again. “I never get out of the city, and I should. I really should. You could live up here and pretend it’s all perfect. The crime, the poverty, the dirt … just gone, vanished. Something to read about in a magazine. Watch it on PBS.”

“Yeah, Captain, it’s real picturesque. Idyllic. That old shack set up on concrete blocks? The one with the crooked chimney and the rusting refrigerator in the front yard? The wind doesn’t crash through it in the winter. The kids aren’t living a curtain away from their parents’ bedroom. And nobody gets hungry, either, when the mill shuts down and papa drinks up the unemployment check. In fact, the tourists don’t even have to see it. They can just keep their eyes on the mountains, the lakes, the rushing rivers. They can just slide on by.”

It was the wrong thing to say, but I couldn’t help it. Bouton reacted like any good social worker; she probed for the details.

“That where you grew up?” she asked, turning toward me.

“I grew up about fifty miles north of where we’re going.” I kept my eyes on the road.

“That’s not what I meant.” Her voice was soft and gentle. Filled with enough pity to make me puke.

“You peek through bedroom windows, too?”

“I don’t get it.”

“Why am I not surprised?” I noted the puzzled look on her face. “It’s not your business, Captain. It’s not
our
business.”

She gave me her best penetrating stare for a moment, then turned away. What I couldn’t say was that it was too late for kindness. For understanding. There may have been a time when some adult could have stepped in and made a difference, but it hadn’t happened. No, the good citizens of Paris, New York, turned their collective backs and kept them turned.

They all knew what was happening. In a small town, everybody knows everything. And when I think about it, there’s no way I could have been the only one. Maybe they justified their indifference by embracing good old family values. Maybe they went home to their kids and passed out extra hugs. Maybe they remembered me in their hypocritical prayers. Maybe they figured I was a bad seed and deserved everything I got.

I remember one morning when I caught a terrific beating, bad enough to justify staying home. Unfortunately, it was too cold for me to seek refuge in the woods (later, I’d learn to deal with the coldest days, but I was nine years old at the time) and too dangerous to hang around with dear old mom. So I pulled a watchcap over my swollen right ear and got on the school bus.

Everything went okay until I walked into the classroom and refused to take my hat off. Mrs. DuPont, my fourth-grade teacher and a stickler for discipline, demanded that I conform to the rules, but I stubbornly refused, even when she threatened to take me to the principal’s office. Our principal, Mr. Knott, liked to use a barber’s strap on “obnoxious” students, male or female. He liked to fold them over his desk until their pants or skirts were drawn up tight against their sweet young buttocks and flail away.

Which is not to say that I was afraid of him. Mr. Knott might hurt me, but, unlike dear old mom, he wouldn’t kill me.

“Take off the hat,” he commanded, “or I’ll take it off for you.”

When I didn’t comply, when I just stood there staring, he stepped around his desk and fulfilled the prophecy. I knew my ear was swollen and my hair was stiff with dried blood, but I wasn’t prepared for the look of horror on his face. Nor for the sharp cry from Mrs. DuPont. The two of them literally recoiled, and for some reason their reaction filled my boyish heart with joy.

After a minute or two, they managed to close their mouths and go into a huddle. Thinking back on it, I realize that I couldn’t have been allowed to return to the classroom, either with or without my hat. But what to do? Should they “take arms against a sea of troubles” or let dear old mom beat me to a pulp?

What they did, after due consideration, was exactly nothing. Mr. Knott dismissed Mrs. DuPont, then sat me in a chair and left me there until the bus came to pick me up at three o’clock. I wasn’t offered food; I wasn’t allowed to go to the playground. I was simply ignored, a vanished, invisible child.

I was mad by the time that day ended. And mad by the time Bouton and I pulled into the parking lot of Guardian Angel Hospital in Lake George an hour later. There was no point to what I was doing. To revisiting a locked and frozen past. Nobody fishes in a septic tank. Not if they want to eat what they catch.

Aloysius Kennedy was, indeed, comatose, a be-tubed skeleton with just enough brain activity to justify the two or three grand a day it cost Medicare to keep him alive. The nursing supervisor who took us to him, a tall, thin, black woman named Shanara Townsend, was much livelier. She couldn’t stop talking about the tribal scarf Bouton wore. Did Bouton know the pattern, the tribe? Was it made in Africa? Bouton answered each question as if she’d just been reunited with a missing relative. I took it as long as I could, waiting for my captain to get to the point. The
cop
point.