Swan Dive Read online

  “I had a message from a Hector Rodriguez.”

  “That’s me.” He extended his hand. “But you ever got to find me on the street, you ask for Niño, huh?”

  We shook. “You pimped for the dead girl.”

  He returned his hand to the wheel, frequently checking side and rearview mirrors. “Oh, harsh word, man. More like a broker. You gotta win the ladies’ respect but let them keep some of it. No rough stuff, no dom-i-na-tion shit from me.”

  “You seemed to dominate Terdell pretty well back there.”

  “That was different. Coming out the pipes, it was like being back in the Nam.” He looked at me, judging something. “You over there?”

  We were winding down some of the same streets Terdell had used on the way in. “For a while.”

  “Thought so. You got the look. Who you with?”

  “MPs. Mostly street patrol.”

  “Combat?”

  “Some.”

  “You there for Tet?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Bad shit.”

  “It was.”

  “I was before that. Iron Triangle with the Hundred Seventy-third Airborne. You a Cubano grunt and come in at five-five and maybe one twenty-five with ammo, they call Niño and make you a tunnel rat. You ever go in one?”

  “Not till tonight.”

  “Oh, walk in the park compared to the dinks’ underground. They dig miles of tunnels, man, they fucken lived in the tunnels. It was like that movie, you know it? Science fiction thing with the foxy Yvette chick?”

  “The Time Machine?”

  “Yeah, yeah, it was like that. We was the beautiful people, the boo-coo beautiful American soldiers, man. But we was living on top of all these ugly dinks, digging their way to Saigon.”

  “Last I heard, they made it.”

  “Not while I was there, man.” Niño warmed to it. “One of the bro’s, he’d hear digging, see? It’d happen like that, you be taking five, next thing you know, it’s like the fucken earth itching itself inside. The bro’ would call me over, we wait it out, then punch through into the tunnel. We short on time, we just frag it. Took us months to see that didn’t do no good. Fucken tunnels stronger than iron, man, after that gook gunk bake in the fucken sun.”

  He seemed to want to talk about it. “What if you had more time?”

  “Oh, if we long on time and heavy on equipment, we blow some smoke into it, see what happens. We long on time, but short on equipment, I go in.”

  “With a forty-five?”

  “Shit, no, man. Too much noise, fuck up you ears. I had a thirty-eight, some guys even go down to a twenty-two, but that was too fucken small for me.”

  “You wear a flak jacket or what?”

  “Neg-a-tive. Too hot. You take off anything that clinks, leave you in the tee shirt, fatigue pants, and boots. Then you take the thirty-eight, a flashlight, and a stick. You tie the light to the stick with some commo wire or det cord, let you hold it out from you, trick the dink into shooting first where you ain’t. Then you take the knife so you can feel around in front of you, find the booby traps before they find you.”

  I said without inflection, “Sounds great.”

  “Man, it was … it was like going back inside you mama, you know it? You move real slow, hands and knees, ’cause the dinks, they wasn’t building no indoor tracks. The tunnels maybe a yard by a yard and a half, max, unless you got into one of the chambers.”

  “Chambers?”

  “Yeah, you wouldn’t believe it, you didn’t see it. Some of the tunnels go down into dormitories, hospitals. I even heard some guys in the Big Red One found some kinda stage thing, like a theater, down one of their holes.”

  “How the hell did you keep track of where you were?”

  “You fucken counted, man, counted and mem-o-rized like the teachers in second grade want you to, ’cause you forget how you come in, you ain’t coming out next to your squad. You maybe coming out into some other outfit, who sees this little guy covered with dirt and sweat and shit. They see what looks like a dink coming out of a hole they didn’t see a GI go into, they fucken open up on you, don’t give you no chance to show ’em you speak the English with a nice Cubano edge on it.”

  “You actually see many enemy in the tunnels?”

  “You don’t see that much, man. Mostly you hear and you smell. Madrón, you think Terdell not nice to be near, you try some of the holes the dinks live in for months. I hit a tunnel had some rotten rice once, thought I was gonna die. Mostly you listen, though. You hear something, you stop everything, moving, sweating, breathing. Usually be some fucken animal, like a snake. Shit, you got so you could hear centipedes and spiders, it was so quiet and they was so big.”

  “And if it wasn’t an animal?”

  “Turns out to be a dink, man, you try to take him with the knife first, so maybe you get another one without the other one getting you. Sometimes it’s a cold hole, no dinks, but you hit the jackpot, on weapons, medicals, all that good shit. Man, you think you a king, the king of the fucken tunnel rats. Other times you crawl three fucken miles and don’t find nothing.”

  Niño stopped and took a breath. “Ain’t talked about those days in a long fucken time.”

  “Some of them are hard to forget.”

  He looked over at me, confidingly, hands lying easy and capable on the wheel of the Olds. “You always be what you was then, you know it? You had the cojones, the balls, then, you got ’em now. You chickenshit then, you the same now.”

  “What did you want to talk with me about?”

  “Huh?”

  “When you called me. What did you want?”

  “Oh, yeah, right. The Angel, she was a good worker, man. She free-lance a lot, but that’s the way I run my ladies. Nobody got a slave collar on her.”

  “You the one introduced her to Marsh?”

  “No. The ladies, they pick up the free-lance dudes on their own. She make me good money, though, and I looking for a little re-im-burse-ment.”

  “I didn’t kill her. Or Marsh.”

  “Man, I believe it. I check you out. You so straight, the nuns take you back right now, no questions asked.”

  “So what’s your angle?”

  “Marsh have some of J.J.’s shit on him when he cooled. I could do some things with that stuff, move it somewhere it don’t wreck no school kids while I make my profit.”

  “If I didn’t kill Marsh, I don’t know what happened to the cocaine.”

  “Yeah, but you per-sis-tent, man. Word is you a fucken bull-dog.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, I think you gonna find the stuff, but it might take a while, and I can’t follow you ’round every day.”

  “So you get me away from Terdell and J.J., hoping I’ll tell you if I find it before they do.”

  “Hey, man, I figure you owe me a favor for pulling you dick out of the fire.” He took a card from his pocket and handed it to me. Just his name and a telephone number. “So maybe you pay me back with a little tip when the time come.”

  “To make up for you losing Angel.”

  “Fucken A.”

  “My friend, I’m not about to tip you about any drug stash. I’m just interested in finding out who killed Marsh and the Angel so I can get off the hook.”

  “Hey, so maybe I can help you there. You want to talk with some of my other ladies, maybe they can tell you things about the Angel.”

  I thought about it. Couldn’t hurt. “When?”

  “As they say in the Hollywood, let’s do lunch.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Tomorrow. Say late, ’round one-thirty.”

  “Okay. Where?”

  “I got a favorite place. La Flor. On Sommer off Appleton.”

  “South End?”

  “You got it.” Niño looked at me again. “You talk with her girlfriend yet?”

  “Girlfriend?”

  “The Angel, she like to see all the life can offer, man. She have this butch chick, name of Goldbe
rg, Reena Goldberg.”

  “How do I find her?”

  “South End. Just a coupla blocks from La Flor. She in the book.”

  “Thanks.”

  Niño scratched under his chin. “You didn’t know about the girlfriend, you ain’t seen the Angel’s place yet either.”

  “That’s right. The cops aren’t exactly sharing notes with me.”

  He started to say something else, then stopped and said, “I got a key. To her apartment. You wanna see it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tomorrow night, maybe. We talk about it at lunch.”

  He pulled up two blocks from my building, saying, “Sorry about the service, but if J.J. watching you place again, I don’t want Terdell making me as the one who put him down.”

  “Your secret’s safe. And thanks.”

  I got out of the car gingerly, then left my door open. “You looked pretty professional, sapping Terdell tonight.”

  “Man, you small as me, you gotta learn how to stop guys like him. Without killing them, I mean.”

  “Mind telling me where you were when I got hit Monday afternoon?”

  He laughed and nailed the gas, using his acceleration to close the door as he moved out.

  I walked toward the condominium building slowly, partly because of my aching body and partly because of watching for J.J. and Terdell. Aside from a couple walking hand in hand, I didn’t see anybody.

  When I reached the front stoop, a shadow began to move in the shrubbery. I registered a black face and started before I recognized him.

  “Sergeant,” I said.

  Dawkins nodded. “You looking a little ragged, Cuddy.”

  I brushed at some of the mud, now caking dry here and there. “Want to come up?”

  “That’s what I’m here for.”

  He climbed the outside and inside stairs behind me, waiting patiently as I fumbled with the keys at each door. I motioned him into the living room. “I’m going to change before I sit on my landlord’s furniture. Help yourself to the refrigerator if you want.”

  I went into the bedroom and eased out of the clothes I was wearing. I found some loose-fitting sweats and carried them into the bathroom.

  I had a purple bruise swirled with red at each place where Terdell pasted me with the two-by-four. The skin under my chin from his last shot was broken, but closing over already in that regenerating, reassuring way skin has. I killed the light and went into the living room.

  Dawkins was sitting back in a deep, comfortable chair, legs stretched out straight, arms spread-eagled, with a bottle of Molson’s in his right hand. He was wearing a silk dress shirt and silk suit, sleeves pushed up to his elbows.

  I sat on the couch, leaned back, and closed my eyes. After about two minutes, Dawkins said, “Murphy said you a cool one.”

  “Look, it’s been a long day, and I hurt like hell. What do you want?”

  “Picked up a ripple that J.J. and his man Terdell out to talk with a guy tonight. Looks like you not their idea of good conversation.”

  “Word travels fast.”

  “Like the wind, babe. Like the wind.”

  “Just get to it, okay?”

  “Okay. Marsh’s stuff hasn’t hit the street yet.”

  “How do you know?”

  “J.J. deals in smallish quantity, but high quality. If shit that good appeared in somebody else’s merchandise, I’d know about it.”

  “Couldn’t a big dealer kind of hide it in his volume?”

  “Yeah, and if he stepped on it enough times, nobody’d know the difference. But a major player ain’t likely to deal with whoever did Marsh.”

  “Couldn’t a major player have taken out Marsh himself?”

  “Not the way it was done. Just be three holes in the head behind a building somewheres. No need to send him through the window and mess things up with the Angel.”

  “You said a major player wouldn’t have dealt with the killer. Why?”

  “Too much risk and no need. The big guys, they have import and distribution networks make Toyota go green with envy. Besides, if it did go down that way, we don’t hear about it, ’less we bust the player with some goods, and the player roll over and give us the hitter to go easy on the drug charge.”

  “So where does that leave you?”

  “Pawing the ground. A minor player, he’d have a hard time sitting on the stuff, follow?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Small fry does Marsh and the Angel, he must have need of money real bad. Maybe ’cause of a rip-off, maybe partial to the dog races and into a shy’, whatever. Little guy can’t afford to just sit on the stuff. He’d have to move it, or at least put out some feelers to the other small ones, who are sniffing around for the stuff anyway.”

  “And nobody’s smelled anything.”

  “Right.”

  I stopped for a minute, thinking.

  Dawkins said, “Now I bet you wondering why I been so forthcoming here tonight.”

  “After our session with Holt, that’s exactly what I was wondering.”

  “Holt don’t know about this little visit. And he ain’t gonna.”

  “Because you’re not going to tell him and I’m not going to tell him.”

  “That’s right. This little visit is my own idea. I understand from Murphy that you just done him a favor.”

  “More like a return favor.”

  “Don’t matter. He thought he trusted you, now he not so sure.”

  “I don’t see Murphy sending me messages through you.”

  “He ain’t. Like I said, I’m here on my own.” Dawkins came forward, setting his now empty bottle down deliberately. “Now you listen up. You ask Murphy to run a guy down. He runs him down with me. Then the guy turns up dead, your gun at the scene. You got a fairy tale for it stinks worse than Terdell’s asshole, and all of a sudden some white cops at our level start slipping the word to some white cops above us that maybe the Murphy and the Dawkins pulling something cute.”

  I thought about it. “Especially when Dawkins, the narc who knows everybody, can’t account for why Marsh’s goods haven’t hit the street yet.”

  Dawkins barely moved his head up and down. “You think you smart, Cuddy. I hope to God you smart enough to follow this. Murphy got to be a lieutenant by being smart and straight. I made sergeant by just being smart. Him and me draw good salaries, benefits, I even got this next weekend off. We got too much into the department to get shoved into the shit by whatever it is you think you’re doing.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning you got a file on you now, boy. File marked ‘Narcotics.’ You fuck up the Murphy and me in this, we may be out of the department, but before I go, I see to it that you found with dealer-weight snow in your absolute possession and control. And then you a long time gone to Walpole.”

  “I thought the Corrections Department called it ‘Cedar Junction’ now.”

  “A rose by any other name, babe.” Dawkins stood and walked to the door. “There’s something real hinky here. If you straight, you just might find Marsh’s stuff yourself. That happens, I’d best be the first man you call.”

  He closed the door behind him. I thought about J.J., Niño, and now Dawkins. If I ever did find Marsh’s stuff, I’d better have a roll of dimes on me for the phone.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  AFTER DAWKINS LEFT, I marched ice over the bruised areas, then went to bed. I slept until nearly nine the next morning, the hours washing away some of the pain but replacing it two for one with stiffness. I tried to limber up a little, running or any other real exercise being out of the question. I found Reena Goldberg in the White Pages. Her street in the South End was walking distance from me, but I remembered the block as being nothing but abandoned, burned-out factories and warehouses. I dialed her number.

  After five rings, a strong female voice said, “Hello?”

  “Reena Goldberg?”

  “Yes?”

  “Ms. Goldberg, I’m investigating the death o
f Roy Marsh and—”

  “Oh, please! I’ve already told you guys everything I know. Twice.”

  Riding the cops’ coattails, I said, “I’ll be over to you in an hour. Unless this afternoon would be easier for you?”

  She exhaled loudly. “All right. An hour. You know the address.” She hung up before I could ask her what apartment number, but you can’t have everything.

  I chose a short-sleeved sports shirt and some running pants with pockets and elastic waist to spare the need for a belt. For ten minutes, I watched out my windows, front and side. My car looked the way I left it, and I couldn’t see anyone I didn’t want to meet. I hobbled down the stairs and out the door.

  After three blocks, the walking began to loosen up my injured parts. I felt nearly good by the time I hit Copley Place, an extravagant hotel-shopping mall complex that helps demarcate established Back Bay from the transitional South End. Just inside the Westin Hotel entrance is a magnificent fountain area, with contrived twin waterfalls that delicately and perpetually drop shimmering walls of wetness into the retaining pool below. As I got on the escalator that splits the waterfalls, I saw a man with torn, rolled-up pants carefully place the last layer of stained outerwear on the edge of the pool. He waded in, scooping up the coins that the tourists had tossed in, presumably while making their own wishes.

  A middle-aged woman in designer clothes was standing in front of me on the escalator. Watching the man and wagging her head, she said, “Can you imagine anyone actually doing that?”

  I said, “Maybe he hasn’t eaten for a while.”

  She looked at me as though I’d just accused Ronald Reagan of pedophilia, then turned away and clumped up the steps until she reached the backs of the next highest bunch of people. By the time I reached the top, a security staffer in a golf blazer was calling for backup on a walkie-talkie, and I wasn’t feeling so good anymore.

  Goldberg’s block stood basically as I remembered it, though less of it was actually standing since the last time I was there. Her address was a gray brick building with a veneered steel front door someone had tried peeling back without success. Ignoring an old, jammed buzzer, I pushed a bright nickel one. I waited two minutes, then pushed it again. There was a clanking noise, then the door opened. The woman behind it was perspiring and she said, “Don’t be so impatient. I had to come down from the loft, you know.”