Spotted Cats (28 page)

“I can’t help much. I do know this. The Arab’s name was—or still is, I imagine—Sherif Rahmanan. He was a professor of international relations at the Fletcher School at Tufts, a man in his forties then, with, I believe, an Arab wife and a clutch of Arab children, whom he eagerly abandoned for my amoral—and quite suddenly wealthy—daughter, who was a child of nineteen. He was very swarthy and spoke with an accent. Mary Ellen seemed quite proud of him. She tugged him about on her arm like a trophy. I was convinced at the time that this was some attempt to embarrass me, or hurt me, though for the life of me I still can’t understand why. Nineteen! She’ll be thirty in two months. That’s one third of her life that I have missed. I wonder what she’s like now.” She shrugged. “Anyway, that’s all I know.”

I took my notebook from my jacket pocket and wrote “Sherif Rahmanan, Fletcher School” into it. “Do you have a photo of Mary Ellen?” I asked.

“Her high school graduation picture is the most recent. It’s twelve years old. Will it help?”

“Maybe.”

“Sit tight. I’ll get it.”

She got up and went into the house. I leaned back and gazed over the backyard. Yellow warblers flitted among the shrubbery that bordered the sweeping lawn. From the river beyond I could hear ducks quacking at each other. I closed my eyes and lifted my face to the warm morning sun.

“Are we catnapping?” she said.

I opened my eyes. She was back in her seat across from me. Beside my arm sat a mug of coffee. She was holding one for herself against her chest, warming both of her hands with it. “No,” I said. “We are savoring the sunshine. Winter’s coming.”

“Don’t I know it.” She smiled and handed me a framed photograph. “Mary Ellen Ames as she looked her senior year at Concord Academy.”

The teenaged Mary Ellen Ames had a long thin face with prominent cheekbones, a delicately pointed chin, and Susan’s narrow aristocratic nose and silvery eyes. In the picture Mary Ellen was not smiling. She was quite beautiful. She had the kind of face that would continue to be beautiful throughout her life. “A lovely young lady,” I said.

“She was. Oh, she was wild and unpredictable and difficult. Headstrong and brilliant. But, yes. She was lovely in many ways. Until…”

“Yes.” I touched the picture. “May I keep it?”

“Of course. If it will help.”

“Everything will help.” I slid the photograph from its frame and put it into my attaché case. Then I lit a cigarette and sipped my coffee.

“I can’t think of anything else,” she said.

“Call me if you do.”

“I will.” She stood up. “Come see my flower beds.”

She held her hand out to me. I took it and rose. She led me down the two wide stone steps from the patio onto the lawn. The grass was long and soft and damp and impossibly green underfoot. We walked hand in hand along the edges of the mulched gardens. “I’ve planted lots of bulbs,” Susan said. “Daffs and croci and snowdrops and narcissi and tulips. Tell me why.”

I turned to her. “Huh?”

“Tell me why I’ve done this. They won’t bloom until spring.”

“Oh.” Susan expected to be dead by then. “You can give me a tour when they’ve come up,” I said to her.

“Don’t try to bullshit me, Brady Coyne.”

“I try not to bullshit anybody, Susan.”

“Try harder.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

We finished our tour of the backyard and returned to the house. Terri Fiori was seated at the kitchen table with a stack of papers in front of her. I poked my head in and said, “Take care, General.”

She looked up and winked at me.

Susan led me to the front door. “I don’t know what I’d do without her,” she said.

“She seems very competent.”

Susan jabbed my side with her elbow. “Competent? You are an incorrigible bullshitter, Brady Coyne. Terri’s beautiful, is what she is.”

I shrugged. “I hadn’t really noticed.”

Susan chuckled.

I opened the door, then turned and hugged her and kissed her wrinkled cheek. “Be well, Susan. We’ll keep in touch.”

“Can you do it?” she said. “Can you find her?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll try.”

I
STOPPED AT THE
Walden Sandwich Shop in West Concord for Italian subs for me and Julie. I thought of dropping in on Doc Adams at his Concord office. It was likely that Doc would be performing surgery at Emerson Hospital, but maybe his unbearably delicious assistant Susan Petri would be in, and I could ogle her.

Somehow, my morning with Susan Ames had deflated my enthusiasm for that. Even Susan Petri. A temporary condition, I trusted.

So I took the back roads through Concord and Sudbury and Lincoln, out past the farm stand at Nine Acre Corner where I bought a pumpkin for Julie’s daughter, past all the harvested corn fields where murders of crows and gaggles of Canada geese gluttonized, past the Sudbury River, past Walden Pond, and finally back onto the highway. Autumn was everywhere, the annual and inevitable maturing that presaged the death of the earth, and it reminded me of the cycle of all things. Turn, turn, turn. Susan’s impending death found its place, as, one day, would my own.

I recalled the way Terri Fiori had smiled and winked at me. It made me feel better.

I got back to my office in Copley Square a little after noontime. Julie was on the phone. I plunked the pumpkin down on top of her desk, gave her a sniff of the bag with the subs in it, and went into my office. I thumbed through my telephone directories. No listing for Mary Ellen Ames anywhere.

A few minutes later Julie joined me.

“Hey, thanks for the pumpkin,” she said.

“It’s for Megan, not you.”

“We’ll carve a jack-o’-lantern and name it Brady.”

“I’d be flattered.”

“Let’s eat,” she said.

We spread waxed paper over the top of my desk and dug into the thick sandwiches. We drank Pepsi from cans and chomped on giant dill pickles and barbecued potato chips. I told her about my morning with Susan Ames.

“Boy,” she mumbled around a large mouthful. “That sucks.”

“Death generally does,” I said.

“About her daughter and her, I mean.”

Megan, Julie’s daughter, was five. I knew what she was thinking. I have two boys of my own.

“So how do you plan to find Mary Ellen?” she said.

I reached over with a napkin and wiped a dab of olive oil off her chin. “I guess I’ll start with this Rahmanan and see where it leads me.”

She nodded. “And when you find her?”

“I’ll tell her her mother wants to set things right before she dies.”

“And if she refuses?”

I shrugged. “That’s between Susan and her.”

“What can I do?”

“Just keep the world at bay for a while so I can make some calls.”

We swept the detritus from our lunch into the wastebasket and Julie went back to her desk. I looked up the number for the Fletcher School and pecked it out. I didn’t know if Professor Sherif Rahmanan still taught there, but it was the logical place to start.

When the woman answered the phone, I asked for him.

“I’ll ring his office,” she said.

So he was still there.

Another woman answered the phone. Again I asked for Professor Rahmanan.

“He has no classes today,” she said. “May I take a message?”

“Is he home?”

“I have no idea where he is, sir.”

“Thank you. I’ll try again. No message.”

The big Boston directory listed a Rahmanan, Sherif at a Bailey Street address in Medford. I tried the number. After a couple of rings a woman picked up the phone and said, “Hello?” Even from just those two syllables, the thick accent was obvious.

“Professor Rahmanan, please.”

“And who is this?”

“My name is Coyne. I’m an attorney.”

“One moment, please.”

A minute later a man’s voice, also accented, but cultured and precise, said, “How may I help you?”

“My name is Brady Coyne. I’m Susan Ames’s lawyer, and I was hoping—”

I stopped. He had hung up.

I waited the length of time it took me to smoke a Winston, then rang the Rahmanan number again. This time the man answered.

“Now look,” I said quickly. “You are going to talk to me. One way or the other. Do not hang up on me.”

“Please. Just leave me alone.”

“No.”

“What do you want?” he said softly.

“I don’t want to embarrass you. I need information. About Mary Ellen Ames.”

“I cannot talk. I cannot help you.”

“Listen, Professor,” I said. “I will give you one hour to call me. If I don’t hear from you, I will get into my car and come to your house. Surely I will find somebody there who can help me.”

There was a long hesitation. I expected him to hang up again. Finally he said, “Give me your number.”

I gave it to him.

“I will get back to you.”

I fooled around with some paperwork Julie had left for me. Three quarters of an hour later my console buzzed. I picked up my phone and Julie said, “You got your man, Dick Tracy. Professor Rahmanan on line two.”

“I think it was Sergeant Preston of the Yukon who said that.”

“No. He always said, ‘King, this case is closed.’”

“Elliot Ness, then,” I said.

“Oh, boy,” muttered Julie.

I pressed the blinking button and said, “Professor.”

“Please,” he said. “Quickly. What is it that you want?”

“I want to talk to Mary Ellen Ames. That’s all. I have no interest in delving into your past. Do you know where she is?”

“No.”

“Oh, come on. You and she—”

“Please, sir. Just leave me alone. I cannot help you. I have returned your call, as you insisted. Now I have answered your question.”

“I have some other questions.”

“This is awkward. I cannot talk.”

“Meet me, then.”

“I cannot do that.”

“One way or the other, Professor, we will talk.”

He hesitated a long moment. “Where?”

“Do you know Hung Moon’s? It’s in Somerville. Must be near you.”

“Yes. All right. I know it.”

“How’s eight?”

“Tonight?”

“Yes.”

“Eight is not good. The evening is not good for me.” He paused. “I will be there at five. I can give you an hour.”

“Fine. Five.”

“How will I recognize you, Mr. Coyne?”

“I’ll be wearing a lawyer’s costume, complete with attaché case. You?”

“I have a beard, sir. I look like an Arab.”

H
UNG MOON’S IS ON
Highland Avenue in West Somerville, just over the line from Cambridge. It was a favorite spot of Les Katz, a private detective friend of mine. Hung Moon’s, Les always said, had the best monosodium glutamate in Boston. Les liked the Cambodian waitresses, who shuffled around in their soft sandals and tightly wrapped saronglike dresses and, according to Les, offered services beyond the delivery of food and drink. The last time I was at Hung Moon’s was the last time I saw Les Katz alive. That was a couple of years earlier.

I arrived a few minutes before five. The large dining room was empty. I smiled at the hostess and ducked into the bar to the left of the foyer. Two beautiful Asian women wearing business suits were seated there drinking white wine. The bartender was a young Asian man with a smooth face and a wispy Ho Chi Minh beard and a classically inscrutable expression.

I climbed up on a barstool at the end opposite the two women. The bartender came over and emptied the ashtray in front of me. “Sir?” he said.

“Jack Daniel’s. Rocks.”

He nodded. In a minute he slid my drink in front of me.

I lit a cigarette and took a sip of the drink and Sherif Rahmanan appeared in the doorway. He looked at me and frowned. I reached down beside me and held up my attaché case. Rahmanan came over and sat beside me.

He was wearing chino pants and a green crewneck sweater. He had a dark beard, liberally flecked with white. The fringe of hair that half-circled his head was mostly white. I guessed he was close to sixty years old. When Mary Ellen was nineteen, this man would have been approaching fifty.

I held my hand out to him. “Professor. Thank you for coming.”

He hesitated, then took my hand briefly. He didn’t bother to grip it or shake it. “You threatened me,” he said. “I had to come.”

“You know what I want,” I said.

“And I already told you. I cannot help you.”

The bartender presented himself in front of Rahmanan. He asked for a glass of soda water.

“You know Mary Ellen,” I said. “I need to talk to her.”

“I do not know her any longer. I once did. It was many years ago. It is over. I am deeply ashamed.”

The bartender placed a glass in front of Rahmanan, who nodded absently and did not pick it up. “Look, sir,” he said to me. “My wife is, how do you say it, Americanized. Women from my country traditionally do not question the behavior of their husbands. Husbands do as they please. Women are taught to accept and serve. It is our culture. It is my culture. My wife, she is not a traditional woman. She does not think that way. I have learned that I no longer think that way, either. According to my culture, I should feel no guilt, no shame. But I felt deep shame, vast guilt. I begged her forgiveness, and she reluctantly granted it to me. We have not been the same since then. I will not subject her to any of that again.”

“I don’t want to screw up your marriage. I just want to talk to Mary Ellen.”

He paused for a long time. “This has nothing to do with me?”

“Nothing.”

“You mentioned her mother.”

“She is dying. She wants to reconcile with her daughter.”

“She has forgiven her, then? And me?”

“I don’t think forgiveness is the issue. Susan Ames couldn’t care less about you.”

“I must trust you on this.”

“You can.”

There was another hesitation. “Very well, sir. I will trust you.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I have not spoken to or seen Mary Ellen in many years. Our—our relationship—it lasted only a few months. Directly after her father died. Then she tired of me. It was easy for her, difficult for me. I had left my wife. I had three children at home then. I did not care. When Mary Ellen abandoned me, I returned to my family. It was—painful. I continued to love Mary Ellen. I tried to see her. I kept track of her, called her, watched her, followed her. She would have nothing to do with me. She threatened me.”