Snapshot (29 page)

As good a way as any to get his room number.

Menander, thirty-nine, had been considered something of a whiz kid, although his company never seemed to take off after the early promise it had shown with the development and marketing of its premier drug, the costly but effective Cephamycin. Menander had been criticized for taking a soft approach to marketing, for keeping the company private, for not raising massive capital and diving headlong into the biotech future. His decision, some years ago, to repackage Cephamycin, using a fancy holographic logo, had been seen as sheer extravagance by several members of the board of directors who'd almost voted him out of office. Others had regarded it as a logical counterattack to the drug-tampering craze that had temporarily driven Tylenol off the shelves. This was from the business section, not the news update.

I finished the oversalted soup, rinsed the cup, shook it dry, and stuck it back in the cupboard. Then, returning to my desk, I spread out my borrowed treasures. Six dimly lit photographs. I rubbed my eyes, shook my head, went back to the kitchen, and burrowed in the fridge till I found the already-opened Pepsi. I ought to buy caffeine pills.

I went over the first photo with a magnifying lens, trying to identify the machinery. The lighting was so bad, the shadows so deep, I couldn't be sure what I was seeing.

Same with the second. Same with the third, although I could sense some order, some setup that made me think of an assembly line. A large metal vat had no visible markings in the fourth shot. The fifth and sixth were even darker and murkier.

Had Emily blundered in taking these shots, or deliberately misprinted them?

Disgusted, I turned them facedown on the blotter, and immediately noticed a legible symbol, a faintly penciled notation in the bottom left-hand corner of the fourth photo.

Tiny numerals: 6, 3, 2. A letter L. A word:
WOOD
.

I stared at it until my head hurt, but no illumination came, so I unlocked the upper desk drawer and removed the file I'd forced Paolina's friend, Sanchez, to xerox. Working two or three cases at once isn't bad. When you hit a brick wall on one case, concentrating on the other can free enough brain cells to generate a breakthrough on the first.

Sometimes you just double your frustration level, shoot it straight into the danger zone.

The more I read about Mr. Thurman W. Vandenburg, the bastard who'd hired my garbage thief, the less I knew. An attorney, that most secretive of beasts, he was working for a client named Jaime Valdez Corroyo. Valdez Corroyo was interested in the whereabouts of one Marta Fuentes Giraldo, whom he believed to be his long-lost cousin. A question of inheritance was involved, but while he wished Mrs. Fuentes located, he did not wish to contact her directly. First, he needed assurance that she was not addicted to excessive gambling and drinking, as were so many other members of the Fuentes family. Codicils in the will could preclude her from inheriting if she were a gambler. Therefore it would be best not to raise her hopes until her character and her sources of income were evaluated by a reputable local firm.

Huh?

A list of Marta's “associates” was appended, with an asterisk preceding my name. The client was particularly interested in learning as much about me as possible, including my relationship with Marta's only daughter.

The phone rang. I let it go for three rings, trying to find the magic combination. Maybe the phantom caller would only hang up at the sound of my voice. I lifted the receiver, said nothing.

I heard faint muffled noises, grunts or groans.

“Hello?” I said softly. “Is that you, Emily?”

A slow, seemingly deliberate click.

Damn.

I closed the Vandenburg file, turned back to the photos.

Emily had developed them, therefore they were valuable. They meant something. They were part of the story she needed to tell. I would concentrate on the photos, the location shown in the photos.

632 L wood.

Six thirty-two Longwood Avenue?

Why not check it out? Paolina was safe, either with Roz or with Marta. If Sanchez chose to replace my trash cans, he wouldn't need me to greet him with a brass band.

I already had my picklocks in my pocket.

I sat back in my chair and closed my eyes. Less than a week ago, I'd met Emily Woodrow for the first and only time.… So many things remained unseen. Emily's daughter, Rebecca: I'd only viewed her snapshots. Tina: a single photograph. The CEO of Cephagen: a blurred likeness in a newspaper. For a moment the invisible dead seemed more real to me than Emily Woodrow. Through their photographs they had substance, a single frozen form. Emily had moved, walked, talked. Sobbed and whispered. If she entered my doorway, wearing other clothes, would I recognize her?

The intense blue eyes. The terse sudden speech.

“Do you own a gun?”

“Can you use it?”

“Have you used it?”

“Would you do it again?”

While I waited for darkness, I cleaned, oiled, and loaded my .38 police special.

36

Six thirty-two was the place I'd pegged as a former factory, an eyesore lowering JHHI's property value. I drove around the block, circling it twice, checking the area.

You can learn a lot from looking. Cops who walk a regular beat know who keeps the lights on, who turns them out, who draws the curtains, the angle at which Mrs. Patterson sets her shutters before going to sleep every night at 9:37
P
.
M
. sharp. Especially in small towns, or small neighborhood enclaves, such habits keep the police informed. If I'd known the cops working the medical area, I'd have bought them a few beers and steered the conversation around to 632.

If I'd known them. If I hadn't had the sense that time was running out for Emily.

If
again. That ugly stammering word.

Since I saw no beat cop—nor was I likely to see one since most of Boston's patrolmen are locked into speeding vehicles—I decided to pretend that the cop on the beat was me.

I was still wearing my Winchester break-in outfit, so the impersonation was fairly convincing. The meter-maid hat had suffered slightly in the dash compartment, but a few pats straightened it enough for night wear. I added a black jacket, one of many articles of clothing I keep in my car, to blend in with the dark and hide my gun.

I strolled the perimeter of the block. Six thirty-two was larger than I'd expected, edging up against the narrow alleyway that ran behind JHHI. While it didn't share any walls with Helping Hand, one forty-foot section almost touched. I wondered if there was inside access from one to the other. An underground tunnel. If so, it might make the property a good acquisition for the hospital.

The front windows were plugged with plywood, crisscrossed with one-by-eight pine planks. Weathered boards. Rusty nails. Dust and cobwebs, dead leaves, and dirt. The front door didn't need plywood; a shuttered metal grille, padlocked and rusty, did the job.

Maybe the Boston Housing Authority had plans to destroy the structure, rebuild from scratch. I wondered when 632 had last been occupied. It was no architectural treasure, nothing worth renovating. Far as I knew, it wasn't an historic site. A few high windows had been smashed and left broken. A bird's nest bridged a gap in a gutter.

Did it already belong to JHHI? Was it awaiting a construction crew? Lying fallow till some golden goose passed on and bequeathed a substantial legacy?

Two winos gave me the eye as they passed. I nodded and one dropped his head in a tipsy greeting.

Instead of walking around the block this time, I found a way to squeeze between JHHI and 632, thinking I might gain access to an unobstructed interior view, a place from which Emily might have taken her snapshots. Why bother to nail plywood across a window that faced a brick wall? Most likely, I'd find no such opeining, but it couldn't be taken for granted. Builders erected their walls not knowing that five years later city planners would turn their picture windows into sunless, brick-view squares.

No window. I snagged my jacket on a nail and had to backtrack to keep the rip from becoming a triangular tear. A sharp smell permeated the narrow space.

I had to hold my breath to make it into the alleyway. The odor almost made me gag. In back, it was better. The windows were boarded and barred. The door mesh-grilled.

Somebody once warned me against learning to fire a gun. If you know how, he said, you'll do it. Same thing with picking a lock. If you know how, if you take pride in it, you tend to do it. If your day's been frustrating and you don't know where your client is or who's going to sign your next paycheck—well, I admit my picklocks were weighing heavily in both my pocket and my mind.

I glanced right and left. A drizzle had thinned out the foot traffic, and while I could hear the occasional pedestrian, see car headlights shoot by the mouth of the alley, the temptation was high, and the risk seemed low.

The adjoining buildings were so close, so towering, it seemed almost as if I were in an air shaft, concealed by the sheer height of the surrounding walls. I reached in my shoulder bag and grabbed my flashlight, shining it on the back door lock.

It glistened. I knelt in front of the door, my tongue between my teeth, my pulse racing in my ears. The padlock reinforcing the Yale lock was almost new. Underneath it, a tiny plaque had been affixed to the doorjamb with two brass screws. Nothing fancy, the kind of item you could buy in any hardware store. Plastic-covered to keep out the rain, with a slot at the side big enough to insert a business card.
DELIVERIES FOR CEE CO
., it read in small precise letters.

I stood, ran the light over the edge of the door, felt the hinges. I rubbed my thumb and forefingers together, held them under my nose. Oil. The hinges had been recently oiled. I expanded the circle of light. Fresh tire tracks, deep wide tracks, scored the mud in the alleyway.

I'm not your meet-me-in-the-abandoned-ware-house-at-midnight kind of gal. I'm too tall to play a convincing damsel in distress. I've seen too many horror movies.

Still, I might have gone in. But the edge of the flashlight beam caught the crease of my pants as I got ready to kneel again.

Rust.

Spots of rust.

Like the ones on Tina Sukhia's dress.

Had it been Tina, not Emily, kneeling, camera at the ready? Tina who'd taken the ill-defined shots? Given the precious film to Emily Woodrow?

I scurried out of the alley, listening for the faintest footfall. I checked the backseat before I got into my car.

No abandoned warehouses, thank you very much.

37

I drove straight home. I didn't even slip my jacket off before dialing Mooney. I tapped my fingers on my desk. Answer, dammit, answer.

Someone picked up.

Mooney was out. Could they reach him? Maybe. Yeah, if it was really urgent, they'd try.

“Have him call Carlotta.”

“Yeah.”

“Mister, this is not some boyfriend-girlfriend thing. This is business.”

“Hey, I said I'd have him call.”

“Fast,” I said.

Draping my jacket over the back of my chair, I bent over and stared at the six grainy photographs. Rubbed dust off the magnifying glass. Turned on the desk light and edged the photos closer. My .38 dug into the base of my spine. I thought about returning it to the drawer, stuck it into my handbag instead.

I caught the phone before it completed one full ring.

“Mooney—”

“Hey? Hi? You there?”

The voice was slurred, familiar. I couldn't place it.

“Who is this?”

“This is Tony. 'Member? Tony Foley?”

Christ. I hoped he wasn't still at the Hyatt bar.

“Hi. How are you?”

“Rotten,” he said with a quick, bitter laugh.

Struck by sudden suspicion, I said, “You haven't been pestering anybody with hang-up calls lately, have you, Tony?”

He stayed quiet so long, I thought I might have hit a nerve.

“Tony? You there?”

“Look,” he said, “I don't know what you're talking about hang-up calls. Maybe I got something for you. I dunno. Maybe I ought to throw it away, forget I saw it. I dunno what Tina would want me to do. I can't figure it.”

“Are you okay?”

“You wanna have a drink with me?”

I glanced at my watch. Past midnight. “Now?”

“Hell, it's nothin'. I'll forget about it. Just make trouble is all—”

“Where are you?” I asked.

“My place. Tina's place.”

“I can't leave here,” I said.

“Oh, well … I'll just toss it—”

“Wait. Is it something you can carry?”

“Sure, but can't you come over here? I'm not feeling real good.” Not sounding good, either. Sounding drunk.

“I need to stay by the phone,” I said.

“Oh.”

“Bring it to me.”

“I dunno. I can't really—”

“You won't have to drive,” I said quickly. “A cab will pick you up in fifteen minutes. A Green and White. He'll honk.”

“A cab? I dunno.”

“You won't have to pay,” I promised. “Not even a tip. All taken care of.”

“Hey, okay! Green and White?”

“Remember, bring it with you.”

“I'm puttin' it in my pocket right now.”

I dialed Gloria.

Maybe Mooney tried to reach me while the phone was busy.

38

The cabbie honked before discharging his cargo. The neighbors must have loved that, but when I saw Tony's condition I understood. The way he weaved across the sidewalk, Tony was as likely to wander into the bushes for a snooze as he was to ring my doorbell. The warning blast on the horn was pure courtesy.

“Hey,” he said, trying not to stumble down the single step to the living room. “Nice.”

“I'll make coffee,” I said, backing off from a handshake that threatened to turn to a sodden embrace.