Swan Dive - Jeremiah Healy

Swan Dive

Jeremiah Healy
1988

For Kate Mattes and Jed Mattes

ONE
-♦-

A breeze on a Thursday in June rustled the papers on
my desk, but I was holding the only two pieces of afternoon mail that
mattered. The first arrived in an envelope with the distinctive royal
blue logo of the Boston Police, a reminder of my appointment at the
department’s pistol range the following Monday morning. In
Massachusetts, you have to reapply every five years to retain a
permit to carry a firearm, and in Boston that means requalifying on
the targets. It’s a good rule, and I called a friend of mine who’s
a police chief in the small suburban town of Bonham to see if he
could meet me at his facility to practice. He and his wife were going
away for the weekend, but he left word with the officer on duty to
let me in on Saturday.

Next I read the annual form letter from the licensing
section of the Department of Public Safety. It advised me that
pursuant to General Laws, Chapter 147, Section 22, et seq., my
present ticket as a private detective expired in forty-five days.
Between now and then, I had to submit the enclosed application for
renewal and accompanying paperwork.

I glanced over the renewal, my head telling me it was
easier to fill it out now, my heart saying I was a little tired of
playing with forms today. The liquid crystal on the cheap digital
clock showed only 3:10, and my head won out.

Next to "Legal Name in Full," I
block-printed "John Francis Cuddy." Above "Date of
Birth," I told the truth. For residence, the Back Bay condo I
was renting; for business address, the Tremont Street office with two
windows and a door in which I was writing. The form for your original
license has spaces to list similar prior employment, for me just the
military police and the claims department of Empire Insurance.
Neither form has a line for marital status, which saved my having to
specify "widower."

I dated and signed the renewal, attesting separately
to the truth of the statements and my honor as a taxpayer. Drawing a
check for the $500 annual fee (and remembering when it was only
$400), I called my surety company, getting their promise to send me a
continuation of my $5,000 posted bond in exchange l for another
hundred bucks of premium. Then I went to the wall and took down my
current license from the "conspicuous place" where the law
requires it to be displayed. After my previous apartment office had
been hit by arson, I’d had to apply for a replacement certificate.
Next to “Reason for Needing Replacement," I’d written
"Burned out." Then I’d decided that sounded
psychologically questionable and substituted "Destroyed by
fire."

I turned the metal frame from Woolworth’s glassside
down on my desk and niggled free the stubborn cardboard backing. I
slid the license out and carried it down the hall to the nice
receptionist in the CPA firm. She reminds me of aunts who bake
cookies, and she photocopied the license for me when none of the
accountants was looking.

Returning to my own office, I gathered up the junk
mail that had blown off the desk in the draft I’d caused opening
and closing the door. I put the original of the license back in the
frame and on the wall. Paperclipping the renewal to the rest of the
documents, I dropped the package on top of the box to await the
bonding company’s certificate.

This time, the clock said just 3:45. On a Thursday in
June. A warm one at that. I thought about dialing Nancy Meagher at
the district attorney’s office, but I was already seeing her for
dinner at her apartment in South Boston. We’d been back together,
in my sense of the word, for only a few weeks, and I didn’t want to
push it. I also thought about driving to Southie a little early, but
I’d visited the cemetery the day before, and Beth’s hillside was
just five blocks from Nancy’s building.

I decided to lock up and go for a walk. Out into the
sunshine across from the Park Street subway station at the corner of
the Common. Past Old Granary Burial Ground, resting place of Samuel
Adams and Paul Revere, where rubbings from the gravestones had to be
prohibited because the copying also eradicates. Through Government
Center, the utilitarian tower of the McCormack federal building in
stark contrast to the massive, award-winning City Hall designed by I.
M. Pei. And down into Quincy Market, Boston’s refurbished
waterfront, which has served as a model for a dozen such projects
elsewhere.

The market area was vibrant as ever, the pillared and
domed center building and cobblestoned walkways teeming with upscale
urbanites drinking at the outdoor cafés and downscale tourists
engaged in a perpetual feeding frenzy. You can hardly blame the
tourists, given the variety of delights tactically placed around each
corner they turn. Souvlaki stands, raw bars, fried dough counters.
Mixed fruit on a stick, frozen yogurt atop a cone, shish kebab in a
pita pouch. All elaborately festive and apparently successful, until
you notice that a chocolate chip cookie costs as much as a loaf of
bread in Omaha and that very few visitors
wearing
J. C. Penney shirts are toting bags from the tony designer shops
crammed into ten-by-twenty stalls.

I appreciate what the
market area has done for the city, but I can take it only in small,
infrequent doses. At least the folks there that afternoon were
laughing and alive, which was more than I could say for many of the
people I’d been around lately.

* * *

“
What’s that?" I said, looking down at the
kitchen floor.

Nancy Meagher closed the apartment door behind me. "A
friend of mine wanted to adopt a dog, so I went up with her to an
animal shelter in Salem. When I saw this little fella, I knew there
was something missing in my life."

The tiny kitten, a gray tiger with too-big paws and
ears, just stared up at me.

Nancy said, "Don’t you want to know his name?"

"I could never see naming something that doesn’t
come when you call it."

"Oh, John. You’re going to love him. Isn’t
that right, Renfield?"

“
Renfield?"

“
Yes. Ring a bell?"

"Not quite."

"In the Dracula movie with Bela Lugosi, Renfield
is the Englishman who goes mad and begins eating small mammals for
their blood."

I watched Renfield and wiggled my foot. He licked his
chops and pounced, sinking his front claws and teeth into my sock,
playing tug-of-war with the spandex.

"Why don’t you two go into the living room.
White wine okay?"

"Fine."

I dragged Renfield into Nancy’s bay-windowed parlor
and settled onto one of her throw pillows. Prying his grip off my
foot, I hefted him in my palm. He was about the size and weight of a
brandy snifter. He blinked at me once, then started gnawing on my
thumb.

Nancy came in with our drinks. "Getting
acquainted?"

"I think he senses you’re running low on
parakeets."

She set the glasses down and picked up a Ping-Pong
ball. She tapped it with her fingernail, which got Renfield’s
immediate and undivided attention. Then she tossed it onto the
hardwood floor at the edge of her rug. Renfield sprang from my hand
and hit the ground with all legs pumping, catching up to the ball and
whacking it till he and the ball skittered out of sight into the
kitchen.

I reached for my drink and Nancy raised hers. We
clinked as she said, "To a fresh start."

We cruised through the next half hour on simple,
almost domestic small talk. I helped make a salad to go with the
swordfish in the broiler, and we ate at her ! kitchen table. There
was a persistent but erratic scratching at my pants cuff, like a
determined novice lineman trying to climb his first telephone pole.

“
Is it all right to feed him from the table?"

She smiled. "Softening already?"

I picked up a morsel of swordfish the size of my
pinkie nail. "Just thinking of my wardrobe."

As soon as Renfield saw the treat, he sat up and
begged. Well, as much as a cat will beg. I lightly dropped the food
onto his nose, his pupils focusing crazily as he tentatively swatted
and then gobbled it. I repeated the drill twice more.

“
Why are you putting the food on his nose?"

"I like watching his eyes cross."

“
Great," she said around a bite of tomato. If
the behaviorists are right, in two months I’ll have a Siamese."

We finished dinner and moved into the parlor,
dawdling over the rest of the wine as we watched the evening news.
About halfway into the broadcast, the male anchor warned that the
following scenes might not be suitable for young children. After a
pause short enough to retain viewers but not long enough to shoo any
kids out of the room, the female anchor introduced the videotape of a
courthouse shoot-out involving me a few weeks before.

Nancy started to get up. "I’ll change it."

"No."

She looked at me questioningly.

"No, Nance. I want to see it."

The video was disjointed, the camera operator near
the witness stand obviously and understandably jumping and bumping
the tripod as the gunfire erupted. The tape showed the situation from
an angle I hadn’t had in person.

Nancy said, "You’re studying it, aren’t
you?"

I kept my eyes on the screen, the station rolling the
footage in Sam Peckinpah slow motion. "Yes."

“
Why?

"To see if there was anything I could’ve done,
anything I missed."

"So you’re better next time?"

"ln a manner of speaking." The program
dissolved to a commercial. “Think it’s crazy?"

"Yes. And no, I guess. I do the same thing after
a trial, whether I get a conviction or not. I rerun the case in my
head, to see if I can spot something I can use again. What I can’t
see is how you can do it when you were so emotionally involved."

"I can’t explain it in words. It’s more like
I don’t feel the emotion now, the incident separates from the
lesson."

Nancy nodded, but I think less from being persuaded
than from wanting to close the subject. To avoid her own similar
memories of a wintery night in the graveyard around the comer.
Instead she came over to me, resting her head on my shoulder. I said,
"You know, you’re the best thing that’s happened to me in
years."

She moved her face very slowly, left to right,
nuzzling me softly just above the collar. "I’d like to be more
than that."

I tilted my head back just enough to see her. Bangs
of short black hair and freckles sprinkled just right against a field
of widely spaced blue eyes. "If our luck holds out, I think
you’re going to be."

"Would the smart money be on tonight?"

I sighed, and Nancy went back to my neck, where she
pecked me once and said, "I didn’t think so."

"Nance—"

"No." She pulled away, a little sheepish.
"I’m sorry, I keep doing that. I meant that no, I understand.
I was just looking for a status report, not trying to put on any
pressure."

"I know. And I appreciate it."

She put both her hands on my shoulders and squeezed.
“Boy, I just hope we’re both worth waiting for."

We laughed. I said, “How about dinner tomorrow?"

A frown. "I can’t. I promised a friend of mine
from New York that I’d fly down on the shuttle tomorrow afternoon
and stay the weekend with her."

"Monday then?"

"Sounds great."

"I’ll pick you up at your office, and we can
eat at Locke Ober’s."

“
Percy Plunger. Are we celebrating?"

“
Anticipating."

She smiled. "Make it about six-fifteen. Whenever
I break away early on a Friday, things pile up."

After the network news, I kissed Nancy goodnight and
drove home to the eight-unit brownstone on Beacon Street. I parked my
Fiat 124 in the assigned space behind the building, the lamp pole’s
light supposedly discouraging the car strippers that are a constant
of downtown living. A couple of years ago, our state legislature
passed a Home Defense bill, which basically gives a resident the
right to shoot an intruder who the resident believes might cause
serious injury or death. Now some of the gentry wanted a Blaupunkt
Defense bill, which would allow the owner of a BMW to shoot any
thirteen-year-old breaking into the car for the radio. I wouldn’t
bet against it. Walking around to the front of my building, I got my
mail from the entrance foyer and climbed the stairs to the condo. My
landlord, a doctor on a two-year residency program in Chicago, had
decorated the place with Scandinavian Design furniture. In daytime,
the pieces were cheerily set off by the ultraviolet rays flooding
through the seven living room windows. Now, however, I had to use the
lights.