Small Vices Part 16

"Yeah. He wasn't friendly either. And he never mentioned Stapleton."

"Might want to talk to him again," Hawk said. "Sound like somebody lying."

"Almost certainly," I said. "Cops always talk to the husband or the boyfriend in a case like this."

"So why he lying?"

"Be good to know," I said.

"And how come the cop... whatsis name?"

"Miller."

"How come Miller don't mention Stapleton," Hawk said, "and Stapleton's name never come up in the transcript?"

I didn't even know Hawk had a copy of the transcript.

But I was used to that. Even I never really knew Hawk.

"That'd be good to know, too," I said.

"And who looking to get you run off the case?"

"That'd be dandy to know."

I swiveled my chair a little and looked out my window and sipped my wine. It had rained hard last night and cleared before dawn. The morning sun was bright, and outside my window everything in the Back Bay looked clean and morally alert.

"Another thing that bothers me," I said, "is that Stapleton went to Andover three years behind Hunt McMartin and coincident with McMartin's wife."

"They the people ID'd Ellis?"

"Yeah."

"So Stapleton's girlfriend get killed, and by coincidence people he went to prep school with ID the killer and n.o.body mention that?"

"Not to me," I said. "And it's not in the trial transcripts."

"'Course not everybody go to Andover know each other," Hawk said.

"True," I said.

"Still a coincidence," Hawk said.

"Un huh."

"You like coincidences?"

"I hate them," I said. "How about you."

"Got no feeling on it," Hawk said. "You the detective. I just a thug."

"You're too modest," I said.

Hawk grinned.

"Didn't mean to say I wasn't a great thug," he said.

"Another thing that's bothersome," I said, "is even though, according to the ME, there's no proof of rape they found no s.e.m.e.n, for instance-everybody automatically refers to the fatal event as a rape and murder."

"That 'cause the alleged perp is a brother," Hawk said.

"And all you guys think about is ravaging our women."

"Not all," Hawk said. "Sometimes we think 'bout eating fried chicken."

"While ravaging our women?" I said.

"When possible," Hawk said. "What did she die of?"

"Strangulation."

"Manual?"

"No, some kind of ligature."

"Ligature," Hawk said. "Easy to see how you got to be a detective. I a.s.sume they never found this here ligature."

"Nope."

"And they didn't find her clothes?"

"Nope."

"They ever establish a, ah, prior connection between Ellis and the deceased?"

"Nope."

Across Berkeley Street from my office the tourists were posing with the bear outside of FAO Schwarz. The coffee shop on the first floor must have changed the grease in the frialator. There was a clean smell to it as it drifted up from the alley vent.

"They ever establish how Ellis got out to Pemberton?" Hawk said.

"The eyewitnesses said he was driving an old pink Cadillac."

"Yeah, that's what we drive," Hawk said. "They ever find the car?"

"Nope."

"They get the license number?"

"Nope."

"But there was one registered to Ellis."

"Nope."

Hawk ate the last scallop. I turned back to the desk and took a healthful bite of coleslaw.

"So," Hawk said, "Alves borrows or steals a car one night, an inconspicuous old pink Caddy. He drives out to Pemberton in his inconspicuous car, where there ain't no black folks, and the cops pay attention to any that they see. He cruises around in his inconspicuous car until he spots a white girl on a busy street, drags her into his inconspicuous car in front of witnesses, drives her somewhere, takes off her clothes and strangles her, though he maybe doesn't rape her, dumps her body in the middle of the Pemberton Campus, and rides on back home with her clothes and the aforesaid ligature in his inconspicuous car, so in case the cops stop him he can incriminate himself."

"He could have dropped the clothes off in a Dumpster somewhere."

"Why take them at all?" Hawk said.

"I can't imagine," I said. "Ellis has spent half his life in the criminal justice system. He'd know better than to be caught with stuff like that."

"He'd leave them right where they fell," Hawk said.

"Sure, unless there was something about them that would incriminate him."

"Like what?" Hawk said.

"If she fought him enough to draw blood."

"But she didn't."

"According to the coroner's report there was no blood under her fingernails," I said. "No fend-off bruises on her arms. In fact, there's no sign of her putting up any resistance."

"And Ellis didn't have a mark on him," Hawk said.

"Maybe he took her to his home and undressed her there."

"And then killed her and drove all the way back out to Pemberton with her dead in the car? Or drove her out naked in the car and killed her there?"

"Don't make any sense," Hawk said.

"No, it doesn't."

"So who would take the clothes?" Hawk said.

"Someone who didn't know what they were doing and panicked."

"Don't sound like my man Ellis," Hawk said.

"No, it doesn't."

We were quiet. The scallops and coleslaw were gone. There was about one gla.s.s each left of the wine. Hawk picked up the bottle.

"Don't keep so good once it's opened," he said.

"I know," I said.

"Better finish it up," Hawk said.

"We'd be fools not to," I said.

Hawk poured out the wine, and we sat in the quiet office and looked out at the bright morning and finished it.

Chapter 23.

THE MAROON CHEVY wagon that had picked up Beer Keg and his crew was registered to Bruce Parisi at an address in Arlington, near the Winchester line. I called Rita Fiore.

"Can you find out if a guy named Bruce Parisi, currently living on Hutchinson Road in Arlington, has a record."

"Sure."

"And, if he does, and I'll bet he does, get me whatever you can on him."

"Sure, I'll call you back."

"No, I'm in the car," I said. "It's easier if I call you."

"Well, a car phone?"

"Modern crime fighter," I said.

It was a bright, windy day at the rim of the Mystic lakes. I turned left off Mystic Street and onto Hutchinson Avenue and drove across the slope of a pretty good-sized hill parked a little downhill from the house and across the street. It was a white colonial with green shutters and a screened porch on the side. It sat further uphill from the road. A long hot top driveway ran up past the screen porch and widened into a turn-around in front of a two-car garage set back of the house. The Chevy wagon was in the turn-around.

I sat with the motor idling and scanned the dial for music. My favorite, Music America, had been taken off the local public radio station by the airheads who ran it. I listened occasionally to one or another of the college stations, but they tended to play fusion, and the DJs were usually painful. I hit the scan b.u.t.ton and watched it go around the dial without finding anything I wanted to hear. While I sat with the scanner scanning, the front door opened and a man came down the front steps looking like he was going to a reception at the British Consulate in a blue Chesterfield overcoat and a gray homburg hat. He got in the Chevy wagon, backed down the long driveway, and headed out past me toward Mystic Street. I let him turn the corner and U-turned and drifted along behind him. I could afford to lay back and let him get ahead of me. If I lost him, I knew where he lived. When you have that luxury, tailing is a breeze. We went along Mystic Street, turned onto Medford Street, and went through West Medford into Medford Square. He went down an alley between two buildings. I pulled up across from the alley entrance next to a "No Standing" sign and waited. In a minute or two he came out of the alley and went into a store front. The sign in the front window said "Parisi Enterprises." I picked up my car phone and called Rita Fiore.

"I'm sitting outside Bruce Parisi's office in Medford Square," I said. "What do you have on him."

"Been arrested three times," Rita said. "Loan sharking twice, once for strong arm stuff: he contracted some goons to help break a strike."

"Where's Eugene Debs when you need him," I said.

"There's something might be interesting, though. Last time he was busted, two years ago for loan sharking, the arresting officer was a State Detective named Miller."

"Tommy Miller?"

"Yes," Rita said. "Wasn't he the man who arrested Ellis Alves?"

"Yes," I said. "He was."