The Dark House (25 page)

“All right, Rollins, it's time to unload on me now. Three people are on you? What the hell's going on here? What have you been doing?”

“Nothing!”

“Cut the shit, would you? Start at the beginning.”

Rollins started to explain about following the Audi in Somerville, but Schecter interrupted him with a roar: “Wait a second. You were doing
what
? You FBI now?”

Rollins' heart sank. Clearly, he wouldn't be able to breeze through this. “No. This is not a job, if that's what you mean. It's just something I'd started to do—in my spare time.”

“
What
is, exactly?” Schecter always zeroed right in on any evasions.

Rollins wasn't sure what word to use. He doubted that his own preferred term, “pursuits,” would wash. He braced himself. “Tailing people, I guess you'd say.”

Schecter blew out some smoke. “You're kidding.”

“I've only done it a few times,” Rollins insisted. But then he sensed Marj listening in, and he remembered how he'd told her the same. “Well, more than a few, I suppose.”

“So it's like a hobby,” Schecter said.

“Yes, I suppose you could say that,” Rollins admitted, relieved to find a word that was acceptable to both of them. “It's just something I started doing. It helps me unwind.”

“Fucking wacko.”

“Yes, probably,” Rollins admitted.

It was a painful concession, as Schecter must have sensed. “Okay, so you followed this car.” He puffed on his cigar. “Then what?”

Rollins described following Jeffries to the dark house, then meeting Sloane there, and spying on him. Schecter listened quietly, taking a pull on his cigar now and then.

“Well, that's the craziest fucking thing I ever heard,” Schecter said when Rollins was finally done.

“No one was ever supposed to know, all right?” Rollins said with some irritation.

“No one ever is.”

“I called you for help, Al,” Rollins reminded the investigator.

Schecter went quiet for a moment. “Just tell me one thing. How's that dykey cousin of yours fit in?”

Rollins told him about Marj's finding the photograph of Cornelia in the
Globe
file on the North Reading house.

“So that's why you went up to Londonderry?”

“Partly.”

“What's the other part?”

“I'd rather not go into that now.” He wasn't willing to confide everything. There were some aspects of this drama that simply seemed too personal. He could tell Marj, but he'd had to work at it. They came from a part of him that was painful to reach.

“Rollins,” Schecter prodded.

“I was just there, all right?”

“Okay, you were just there. And you found out that her house had been sold. So there seems to be some movement there.”

“Some.”

“Like the maggots are starting to squirm.” That was a favorite Schecter expression.

“You could say that.”

He took another puff. “And what's the deal with North Reading—Cornelia never lived there, did she?”

“Not so far as I know.” Rollins told him that a next-door neighbor had hinted about some wild goings-on in the house, and the
Globe
had reported Sloane's drug arrest. “So there may be a link there,” Rollins said. “Cornelia used drugs—marijuana, anyway. Maybe there's a drug connection of some kind.”

“Could be,” Schecter said, but he didn't sound satisfied. He asked for the street address of the Elmhurst house, then said he would put in a call to the chief of police down in North Reading to see what he
could pick up. “We go back a ways.” Then he added: “Now, what are you doing tonight? Aside from you know what.”

“No plans. We're kind of holed up here.”

“Good, because I'm coming down to see you before you get yourselves killed.”

“We'll be all right, Al.”

“Course you will. Meet me at Joey's at six.” That was a Waterfront restaurant he'd always liked. “I'll be in the back. Bring the broad. I'd like to meet her. Deal?”

Rollins cupped a hand over the receiver. “He wants to meet us for dinner.”

Marj nodded.

“Fine,” Rollins said.

“See you there.”

J
oey's was an old-fashioned fish place on Atlantic Avenue, a block from the wharves, where the air was wet with the smell of the sea. It had an aquarium just inside the door, and Marj paused a moment to watch the colorful, big-eyed fish swim about. “Look at them,” she told Rollins, pointing. “All eyes, just like you.” Then she laughed, and Rollins led her inside. She was wearing a long, slinky skirt and matching vest that she'd purchased at the shop downstairs at the Ritz and charged to the room. He was excited to feel the vest's gold brocade under his fingertips, especially knowing that he'd paid for it—and that her bare flesh was on the other side. He imagined that he'd staked a claim to her publicly. As he entered the restaurant, he raised his chin and thrust out his shoulders slightly, conscious of his profile beside this beauty whom he had dressed in gold.

It was just before six, and the restaurant was nearly deserted, except for a few salesman-types at the bar getting an early start on happy hour. Some light jazz was playing, and there were a few neon logos on the walls.

An Asian woman in black came out from the kitchen. “You the ones with Al?” she asked.

“That's right.” Rollins nodded. “He said to be here at six.”

“I'll take you to your table. He called to say he's running late.”

The woman led the two of them back through the dining room to a corner booth, lit by a flickering candle. Schecter had met Rollins here at this very table many times back when Rollins was doing the Blanchard story. Schecter had always dined with his back to the rear wall, so he could scan the crowd, just as he had always ordered the veal. He hated fish, he told Rollins more than once. He came only for the atmosphere. “Every other place seems so new,” he'd said.

“You feel all right about this?” Marj asked after the hostess had seated them. “You seem a little edgy.”

“A lot's happened today.”

“Yeah, well, I'm not too happy to be back near Tina, but I'm trying to at least act calm. She's not that far away, you know.”

It was true: Rollins' North End apartment building was just a few blocks away. Rollins had insisted on coming by cab so as not to advertise his presence. “She'd have to be psychic to find us here,” he told her.

“She found you before,” Marj said.

“That man Jeffries found me. He must have followed me back from North Reading, then told Sloane, and Sloane got Tina to keep an eye on me. That's my guess anyway.”

Marj flagged down a waiter and ordered a strawberry daiquiri, and Rollins asked for a glass of iced tea. Marj fell silent, waiting for her drink, while Rollins continued to check his watch and scrutinize the faces of the other diners as they arrived. Finally, the hostess gave out a squeal, and Rollins spotted a heavyset man in a wrinkled raincoat by the front door. Al Schecter. He acknowledged Rollins with a wave. As he handed his raincoat to the hostess, he leaned over to whisper some
thing that caused her to squeal again and then to slap him playfully on his bulky shoulder. “You're terrible,” she teased.

Smiling, Schecter made his way down the dining room toward Rollins and Marj, stopping occasionally to say hello to a couple of his fellow diners. The distinctive Schecter scent—a mixture of sweat, cigars, and aftershave—reached Rollins a moment before the detective himself did.

“Edward Rollins!” Schecter bellowed as he swung his thick hand into Rollins' and pumped it a couple of times. Rollins felt comforted to see this big bull of a man. Broad-shouldered, barrel-chested, Schecter had been a football lineman in college, and he still looked like he could go headfirst through a brick wall if necessary.

Conscious of Marj beside him, Rollins started to introduce her, but Schecter broke in. “Hey, she
is
cute.” Then he took a step back to survey Rollins' colorful attire. “And she's dressing you, too?”

Schecter winked at her. “What say we dump this guy and go someplace?”

“I can't,” Marj replied coolly. “I've already ordered a drink.”

Rollins suddenly felt oily inside his new clothes, but Schecter let out a deep-throated rumble of pleasure. “Oh, she's a live one.” He slid into the open booth by the wall and set down his briefcase on the seat beside him, then hailed the waiter for a beer. “And he'll have one, too.” He pointed toward Rollins.

“I've got some iced tea coming—”

“Fuck that,” Schecter said. “I just came from the chief. When you see what he gave me, you'll need some booze in you.
Lots
.”

“What did you find?” Rollins asked.

“Drink up, Rollins.” Schecter turned to Marj. “He needs to loosen up, don't you think? So uptight all the time.”

“We've been working on that,” Marj said.

“I'll bet you have.” Schecter grinned, then glanced around at the restaurant walls. “Place has been spruced up a bit. I'll have to speak to Joey.” He reached for one of the toothpicks that were set out in a little dish. Silence descended on the table for a moment, but then the drinks came, and Schecter downed some of his beer. “You spoken to Pat at all?” he asked Rollins, referring to his wife.

Rollins shook his head. “No, should I have?” He'd always liked Schecter's wife—a quiet, easygoing woman with a gentle sense of humor, which was key to getting on with Al.

Schecter thought Rollins might have talked to her in trying to get in touch with him. “I was just curious to see how she was doing.”

“I take it you're divorced,” Marj said.

“Yup.” Schecter reached for his beer and took a long chug.

“So what happened?” Rollins pressed.

Schecter looked at him. “I didn't think you cared about personal stuff.” He turned to Marj. “This your influence?”

“Maybe I banged on him a little,” Marj admitted. “But he's been going through some things.”

“So I gather.” Schecter finished off his beer and told them the story. Everything had been reasonably steady until the kids were grown and his wife hit fifty. “Pat started going through some changes, getting peevish. Nothing was right for her. Then it was arguments, real bitchy stuff that surprised me. She started giving me shit about the hours I keep. You know how it is, detective work takes time. She started telling me, what's the point of being married if I never see you, blah, blah, blah.” It went on like that for a year or two. “Then one night, I come home and no Pat. No note, no explanation. I had to call all over the place to find out that she'd started shacking up with somebody she'd met at the club.”

Pat had never struck Rollins as someone who'd take such a risk, and, for all his grumbling, Schecter had seemed happy with his marriage. But then, Rollins had never thought his own parents would break up, either. He glanced at Marj, whose eyes peered out at Schecter over the top of her daiquiri.

“It killed me. We tried to work it out, but she told me she was in love with the guy. Seventeen years we were married. I was in the middle of something like twelve different investigations. But I stopped everything. I went up to Rockport, just for a few days I thought, to try and get my shit together. Been there ever since. I'd always talked about going up there one day. Course, I always thought I'd be there with Pat. But it's just me. I run a little taxi service, shuttling tourists around the islands. It's okay. Been there a year and a half now.”

“Who was the woman on the phone?” Rollins asked.

“Oh, that's Annie. I met her last summer. Nice kid. Real sweet. You'd like her. Doesn't give me any trouble.”

“God forbid,” Marj said.

Schecter looked at her and then to Rollins. “Oh, yeah, a live one,” he said again, with a slightly different tone this time.

The waiter came to take their order. Schecter ordered the veal, while Rollins and Marj both went for the trout special.

“Well, I'm sorry.” Rollins finally took a sip of beer. It was a watery, American variety, a shade too warm. He thought of Pat, off on her own, with two teenagers whom Schecter had barely mentioned. He felt sorry for himself, seeing Schecter diminished, and for Marj, who had to hear all about it. Breakups, deaths, endings, and departures of any kind—they always made him feel small and helpless.

 

“Father! Father! Don't go!”

 

Marj reached under the table and gave his hand a squeeze.

“We had seventeen years. Who knows? Maybe that was enough.” Schecter opened his briefcase. “But now drink up.” He tapped Rollins' beer glass. “Go on, finish it off. I got pictures here, and some of them are a little rough.”

Rollins reluctantly downed the last of the watery brew; he could feel his head lightening.

“Okay,” Schecter said when Rollins was done. He withdrew a manila envelope from the briefcase and handed it across the table to Rollins. “Take a look at these. Turned out the chief knew all about that house of yours.”

Rollins spilled out a dozen black-and-white glossies. The top one was nearly all skin, bare flesh that looked like plastic in the dim light. Rollins picked it up. His fingertips were soon moist where they touched the photo paper. There was a naked man with his bare buttocks raised over a woman spread-eagled under him, her skirt bunched up around her waist. The couple is down on a rug, and, at this angle, the lower portions of a few clothed onlookers—a pair of shoes, a
trouser leg, a short skirt—are visible around the naked couple. Rollins gazed at it with astonishment. “My God, what is this—some kind of orgy?” It seemed to be the stuff of tawdry magazines. “You sure this is the right house?”

“Number twenty-nine Elmhurst, right?”

Rollins nodded, still staring down at the photograph.

“God,” Marj said from beside him, her eyes still on the photograph. “Quite a party.”

Schecter took another swig of beer. “Chief said it was some kind of swingers club. Saturday night kind of thing. Get in there and fuck whoever.” He must have seen Marj's pinched expression. “I know, with all the diseases around?”

Rollins stared at the picture, stunned by its crude starkness. He thought about that ring of onlookers, and now himself, here, watching them. It seemed like a vicious parody of his own night work. He'd tried to capture the whole picture, understanding where the anonymous drivers on random roads fit in to the social landscape. He wanted to know who they were. But these shots simply bore in on the gruesome truth of
what
they were—rutting animals, nothing more.

“They all like this?” Marj reached over and flipped to the second one: A chubby woman wearing only a party hat is sitting on a balding man in a leather chair. His hairy arms encircle her, his fingers squeezing the nipples of her immense breasts. Her mouth is open, her eyelids half-shut, in apparent communion.

“That's so gross!” Marj said. She turned to the third and quickly brought a hand to her mouth. “Oh my God—
look
at that guy.” It showed a man in a T-shirt with his pants off, writhing on the bare floor, while a slender woman squats down on his face and a woman with long hair bends over his midsection.

That was all the pictures that Rollins could bear. He reached over, stacked them up again, and passed them back across the table to Schecter.

“Beauts, aren't they?” Schecter said, shaking his head. He caught the eye of the waiter and ordered another round of drinks.

“Who took the pictures?” Marj asked.

“Some neighbor. He shot 'em through a back window with some low-light film. That's why they're so grainy. Then he went around front and snapped all the license plates he could see.” He dug through the pile of pictures again. “He got some outside shots, too, of the people coming out.”

“How come?” Marj asked.

“Just to bust their balls. It was screwing up the neighborhood, all the cars and activity.” He burrowed into the pile again. “Okay, here's where it gets interesting. Check these out.”

Rollins didn't move. He wasn't sure he could take this. The images were so coarse, the sex so loveless. He kept imagining a print of him and Marj in the bathtub. Would their own ecstasy look any less dreary?

“Go on,” Schecter said. “These are tame. See if there's anyone you recognize.”

Schecter picked a few of the exterior shots out of the pile and slid them before Rollins. The house looked slightly different in the bright light of the flash camera, which produced some glare off the metal siding, and turned the shrubs into rubber. But it was definitely 29 Elmhurst: Rollins recognized the medieval door, and the limestone walkway.

The photographs had been taken in close succession, from the side of the neighboring house. In the first one, the faces are all turned toward the street. The next one is closer-in, and two men have turned in shock to face the camera. And in the last one, one of the men is lunging furiously at the photographer, fists clenched.

Rollins looked closer, astonished. “Christ—is that Jeffries?” he asked.

“Where?” Marj leaned into him, hunching over the picture for a better look.

Rollins pointed at the angry man going at the photographer with his fists.

“Oh, my God!” Marj screamed. “It is. It's
him
.”

“Thought so,” Schecter said. “Check out the back.”

Rollins flipped it over and found a label bearing the words
WAYNE JEFFRIES
in all caps.

“Apparently, Wayne beat the shit out of the photographer. Guy hung on to the film, though, and ID'd him by his car.” Schecter reached across the table and tapped his finger by the second snapshot. “I told you, he's a serious hothead. He's lucky the photographer didn't press charges.”

“Am I missing something here?” Marj asked.

Schecter looked at Rollins. “You didn't tell her?”

Marj: “Tell me what?”

Finally, Rollins spoke. “He has a criminal record, Marj. He served some time in Concord State Prison for aggravated assault.”