Old School Bones (15 page)

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

He can almost picture Lou Votolatto on the other end of the phone connection, poised over a glass of Seven Crown at some roadhouse on the Cape, grinning wickedly into his cell phone.

“No, what the hell, call me anytime. It’s only 11:45 at night.”

“Hey, don’t get all uppity with me, Rambo. Like who’s doing who the favor here? You ever check your phone messages?”

“It was turned off until about an hour ago so—”

“No shit, I’ve been trying to reach you for about eight hours. I thought I asked you yesterday to leave your phone on.”

“Sorry.”

“You got distracted by that dolly didn’t you?”

She stirs at his back, molds against him. Her right hand sliding across his belly. He feels her breath on his neck, catches the scent of Bacardi Limón as she exhales.

“Come on, Lou!”

“Don’t come-on me. I know what you’re up to.”

“You have no idea.”

“You’re shacking up in some hotel over there in Vineyard Haven thinking about what it would be like to make a little Wampanoag papoose.”

“Actually, we’re in Edgartown, if you have to know, at a B&B. I was giving a foot massage with a cream made of raspberries and almonds. So … eat your heart out.
Cristo!”

He hears the buzz of distant conversation coming from his phone. Music. Country and Western. Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett, “It’s Five O’clock Somewhere.” Feels her lips on his free ear.

“Lou?”

A clearing of the throat. “Well … do your thing, kid.”

“What?”

“At least this one’s a real lady, a fine young female. Not some nutso drag queen, like the last time you went on a campaign to join the Knights of the Round Table.”

She presses her cheek to his. The phone sandwiched between them so she can hear too.

“Right. OK. Look, I’m sorry. I just sort of fell off the edge of the Earth here for a while. You know?”

“What else is new.”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

“You were right, Rambo. The finger belongs to a female … probably with Southern European, West African, and Caribbean Indian DNA.”

“So?”

So this is a gene stock usually associated with Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic. And, by the way, there was a trace of nail polish.

“Roxana Calderón?”

“Yeah, it’s beginning to look that way.”

“Jesus
!”

“No shit. Could be you and your girlfriend just solved the mystery of the Magic Airplane.”

He feels her breasts against his back.

“Well, sort of.”

“Say again.”

“We found Roxy … but we haven’t found her killer. Or Liberty Baker’s.”

Her fingers stop their crawl through the plume of hair rising from his groin.

“A bit of a problem, isn’t it? Because it looks like maybe he’s already found you.”

“And now we know he’s not Kevin Singleton.”

“You sure about that?”

“Come on, Lou. Roxana Calderón disappeared more than fifteen years before he was born! Kevin usually drives his father’s silver Murano. And the guy that ran me off the road was in a white SUV.”

“I thought you said it was a truck. A white truck.”

He shrugs. “I could have been mistaken. There was a lot of glare from the rain and the headlights.”

“No shit, Rambo! You were hung over weren’t you?”

She throws off the bed comforter. Sighs. “God, it’s three-thirty!” He stirs. “What’s the matter?”

A shaft of light filters through the curtains, paints the antique sea-captain’s bedroom with shadows.

“I can’t sleep. I’m all jumpy inside. Now there are two dead girls and … and you were making really horrible sounds.”

“Sounds?”

“Groans sort of. No. More like the call of a loon.”

“A loon?”

“Something like that. Spooky. Sad.”

“Sometimes I have bad dreams.”

“About all this killing? About Liberty?”

“Yes and no.”

“I don’t understand?”

He sits up in the four-poster bed, the light from a streetlamp outside making the hair on his chest silvery. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Are you black?”

“What?”

His words seem to come from another world, another universe maybe. She runs her fingers through her hair, forehead to behind her ears, clearing the tangles away from her face. The oversize, red and white T-C DANCERCISE! T-shirt hanging from her shoulders makes her feel impossibly young, or shrinking, masks her breasts almost completely.

“I mean, I know you are Wampanoag. But I always heard that Cape Indians and Portagees have some common ancestors. Black ancestors. You know, from back in the whaling days when the Yankees made all the rest of us live together like—”

“What are you getting at?”

“I’m sorry. It’s none of my business. I shouldn’t have—”

“Yes.” She hears the word flow out of her mouth. Soft but steady. Feels his hand reach across the foot of bedding separating them, take her fingers, her palm. Squeeze a little.

She squeezes back, sending him a code, a signal. “You too, huh?”

“My mother’s mother, we called her Vóvó Chocolate. She was from São Vicente.”

“Where?”

“The Cape Verde Islands.”

“We got some of that too … Where are you going with this, Michael?”

She closes her eyes, lowers her cheek against his shoulder. His arms draw her into a hug. Stiff, but warm.

“Sometimes I dream about beaches and black people. That ever happen to you?”

“Bad dreams … with loon noises?”

“Yeah.”

“No.” She pulls away. Her hands releasing his arms from their hold on her shoulders.

“Forget it then, OK? Lie down, let me rub your back. Maybe you can sleep.”

She kind of doubts it, with this question boiling from her throat. “You have some kind of problem with being part black?”

“It’s more like … I don’t know. You believe in destiny?”

“Fate?”

He looks deep into the pools of her eyes. Tries to ignore the play of shadows over her nose, her lips.

She shrugs. “The Wampanoags say the Great Spirit shapes us all.”

“But do you believe that?”

Something twists, a spring or a little animal, at the back of her brain. “I have to believe I carry all my pain for a reason. Otherwise what’s the point, you know? Things are pretty messed up right now, wouldn’t you say?”

“You mean Liberty and now this other girl, Roxana?”

“Yeah. And your wreck and Kevin Singleton and … I don’t know …”

“ Talk to me.”

“Even this.” She’s still staring into his eyes, his face getting a little blurry as the tears begin to gather. “Look at us. Middle of the night, talking about black folks and the dead. Holding onto each other like we’re the last roots on the side of the cliff.”

“I’m sorry. Sometimes …”

“Maybe we’re both going crazy, Michael. Did you ever think of that?” The words burst out of her throat. “Maybe Liberty’s taking us down with her. Maybe we have to let her go like your buddy Lou says. So we can take care of our own business. Just walk away, you know, and try to breathe a little?”

His face freezes, the wide-eyed look of a man who has been ambushed, clubbed from behind.

“If you can, go ahead. But … I don’t think I …”

“Is this all about race for you? Liberty’s death?”

“No. Yeah. Maybe.”

“Why?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

She leaps out of bed, goes to the window, flings it open. The night air blasts the room. Rattles pictures on the wall. “Why are you laying this at my feet?”

A cat scatters. The Iraqi woman staggers toward him. Toward the soldier. The Wampanoag brave in his desert fatigues. Ronnie. She’s limping. Her right leg dragging. Still balling the
hijab,
working her hands. Not hesitating. Screaming. Daring, begging him to shoot her. Aaserah.

Then she falls. His hands catching her by the pits of her arms. A day-old bullet wound bleeding from her flank.

He has carried her onto the bed, onto the pale green bedspread, pulled the black
abaya
above her waist, stripped away the sash she wrapped around her middle to staunch the flow of blood and yellow ooze from her torn guts. His left hand is pressing a field dressing to the ragged hole above her hip, trying to stop the leaking fluids, the stench of shit, when the medic enters the room, takes one look.

“She’s toast, man.”

“She wanted me to shoot her.”

“You should have. You would have been doing her a favor, believe me, dude. You know how fast gangrene spreads in a crap hole like this city?”

Ronnie’s face hardens.
“
Goddamn it, help her.”

The medic shakes his head, starts back out the door.
“
I got a soldier down up the street.”

The Indian brave picks up his assault rifle, cocks it, points it at the medic’s head.
“
You want to make that a medic down? Or you want to start an I.V. on this woman, white motherfucker?”

WHEN he comes out of the bathroom in his red boxers after showering, shaving, he has a bath towel in one hand, a razor in the other. She’s sitting on the captain’s bed naked, half-wrapped in a sheet, staring blankly out the window at Edgartown Harbor, empty of its summer fleet of yachts. His phone in her hand.

“What’s the matter?”

“Gracie just called you. I recognized her cell number so I picked up.”

He rubs his face with a bath towel, tries to hide his annoyance that she felt free to answer his phone.

“She’s in Boston … and freaking out.”

His forehead, eyebrows squint in confusion. “Your school doesn’t start until next week sometime.”

“I know … But I just can’t leave her there on her own.”

“Cristo!
”

“Exactly.”

“You’re going back to Boston?”

“This is what I get for answering your phone.”

He doesn’t say anything for a while, dries his hair with the towel. “Doesn’t she have friends she can stay with?”

She gives him a look like
Wake up. Liberty’s dead.
“We’re her friends, remember? She called YOU.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. She called Ronnie too.”

“Who?”

“I never told you about my brother, my twin?”

“No.”

“You’d probably like him. Gracie does.”

“Why?”

“He likes to rescue women. Just like you.”

“Ouch.”

“Sorry, Michael.”

“That was mean. Why—”

“Maybe Gracie thinks she needs a knight in shining armor … but I don’t. I’m not a seventeen-year-old girl. I don’t need to be rescued. OK?”

“What did I do to—”

“I’m just saying I need an ally right now, not a white knight.”

“Who ever said I wanted to be a white knight?”

“Gracie. That’s what she calls you.”

He tosses his razor through the bathroom doorway. It drops into the sink. Clatters. “So now it’s goodbye Martha’s Vineyard, hello Boston?”

“At least for me. You can go polish your sword, if you want.”

“Stop!”

“Do you know what Gracie was doing in California?”

“Hanging out with her friends Tory and Justine.”

“Along with Kevin Singleton and his older brother Clyfe.”

Gracie’s waiting on the curb in front of Boston’s South Station when they roll up in Awasha’s car at about noon. The weather has turned cold again. She’s hugging herself in her Red Army coat for warmth. Her hair shimmers with a fresh application of purple streaks. Something about her looks older, more adult, maybe because she is not wearing her glasses or her face has lost its adolescent puffiness.

“I’ve screwed things up haven’t I?” She throws her travel bag on the back seat, climbs in. “You guys were …”

“It’s not important. We’re here for you, OK? You can stay at my place.” Awasha turns her head over her shoulder, looks back from behind the steering wheel, gives Gracie a smile.

It is a tight smile, maybe forced, but it’s the first smile he’s seen on her face since last night after they made love, when he was nuzzling her breasts.

Gracie leans forward and gives them both a wet smooch on the cheek. “I love you guys, you know that? I mean, REALLY love you.”

Awasha’s smile dries up.

“Hey, you want to hear something freaky? I got solid proof that some of these secret societies still exist. And Bumbledork knows about it.”

The Saab accelerates into Boston traffic.

“What?”

“Kevin Singleton was visiting his brother down in Long Beach. As in California. Tory, Justine, and I met up with them. They took us clubbing.”

“Terrific.” Awasha’s voice curdles with sarcasm.

“Just listen, will you, Doc P? Kevin’s brother got a little baked. When he was dancing with me, I sort of teased him about being a fac-brat geek when he was at Tolchie. He said, maybe not. Like I obviously didn’t know shit. ‘Yeah, well what do you know about secret societies,’ I ask him.”

“So?”

“‘You ever hear of Red Tooth,’ he says.”

“He’s a member?”

“Kevin may be too.”

The car veers toward the curb next to Boston Common, screeches to a stop. The driver turns in her seat, looks hard at the teenager.

“You’re sure. This wasn’t just some guy boasting to impress a girl?”

“Hey, I thought you knew me better than that. I always get evidence. Don’t I, Michael? Ninja Girl.”

He rubs his eyes, too little sleep, too much raw coffee on the ferry back from the Vineyard. His vision is fading in and out of focus. The face of the Chinese girl suddenly melting away into a blur of white skin, purple hair, pink lips.

“Check this out.” The girl fishes into the waist pocket of her woolen coat, pulls out a key ring. Hands it to him.

He fingers the stainless ring. Looks at the old-school golden skeleton key on it. And something else. A charm that looks a bit like a miniature acorn. The cap gold, the nut itself ivory and sort of wrinkled. With little brown stains around the edge where it meets the cap.

“What’s this?”

“Clyfe called it a society key.”

“For Red Tooth?”

He hands the key ring to Awasha. She rolls it over in her hands, suddenly tosses it back to him. “Jesus. Damn!”

“What?”

“That’s a human tooth.”

“No shit. Gross, huh?” Gracie makes a gagging face. “Is this Clyfe Singleton’s key? How did you get it?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Gracie!”

“I had to get down with the snakes.”

“You stole this from him.”

She says yeah. He showed her the key at the club. Later the two of them went back to his apartment. Way early in the morning. They were both pretty trashed. He was all over her. But then he passed out. So she just put her hand in his jeans pocket, grabbed the key and split.

“Where were Tory, Justine, and Kevin?”

“Out to breakfast somewhere. I had to call them to come get me.”

“Oh, Gracie!”

“You guys think I’m a slut?”

He looks at Awasha out of the corner of his eye, hopes she’s going to field this one.

“You want me to lecture you about the risk you were taking?”

“No.”

“Then just promise me you’ll stop with this Ninja Girl stuff.”

“I just saw a way to catch a break in the case and—”

“There’s no case! We’re not detectives, Gracie. This is not CSI! We’re more like victims. And how can I impress upon you that Kevin Singleton is not to be trusted. Not him or his brother.”

“OK, Michael, I get it. But catch this. That tooth on the key chain. That’s actually Clyfe’s tooth. That’s the Red Tooth initiation. The brotherhood pulls out one of your twelve-year molars and makes this key charm out of it.”

“Christ!” Awasha closes her eyes. “Only white people would do this kind of crap.”

He takes a deep breath, tries to clear the images of amateur tooth extraction from his mind. “You said something about Dr. Sufridge, Bumbledork earlier …”

“The ruddy bastard is one of them.”

“What?”

“Yeah, he’s Red Tooth.”

“But he’s English.”

“Right. Seems that’s where the brotherhood began. Fucking playing fields of Eton. Real old-school.”

“Shit.”

“Did this guy Clyfe, or Kevin, say anything more about the Club Tropical? Besides the rumor that led us to the secret room?”

“Not yet.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Clyfe is going to be looking for this key … I know how he can find it. And maybe how we can find out who killed Liberty, too.”