Past Due

Chapter 52

“I WAS JUST trying to ask a question,” said Kimberly, arms crossed and sulking as we drove through the streets of Brockton, “and you go tripping all over me like I’m telling a dick joke in front of the queen.”

“I thought we discussed this on the plane,” I said. “I would ask the questions. I have much more experience at this. Years in law school, in the courtroom, investigating my cases. That’s why I get paid.”

“You asked me along.”

“Yes, but just to observe. I mean really, what kind of experience do you have? Asking questions at sorority rushes?”

“Rush can be brutal, V.” She made a show of looking me up and down. “You’d last about a minute and a half.”

“That long? But then I don’t dress like a stewardess.”

“You like it?” she said, her hand flying to her hat. She was wearing a sky blue suit with sharp blue pumps and a blue peaked cap. She looked as tasty as a cupcake with extra frosting, an adolescent fantasy come to life.

“Very becoming,” I said, “though I’m not sure becoming to what.”

“Becoming to a vice president,” she said, “and it was a quality question.”

“It was a touchy-feely piece of Baba Wawa nonsense,” I said.

“Maybe I’m a touchy-feely Baba Wawa kind of girl, whatever the hell a Baba Wawa is. Is that, like, from Star Wars?”

“Who, the bounty hunter?”

“No, the big hairy thing.”

“Chewbacca?”

“I always thought he was sexy.”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“Give him a razor he’d be pimpin’.”

“But he doesn’t talk, all he does is grunt.”

“A boy who knows he’s got nothing to say. Very rare. And you have to admit, the polar bear answer was interesting.”

“The only thing I found interesting,” I said, “was how Tommy Greeley survived in that house as long as he did.”

“I thought Mrs. Greeley was sweet. A little sad, sure. She still misses her son.”

“She was a harridan, Kimberly. Wasn’t it obvious? She was one of those women who numb their bitter resentment with alcohol and make everyone close to them pay for all the lives they failed to lead, all the goals they failed to achieve. She’s a cold-blooded killer.”

“You sound like you have issues, V.”

“I know the type,” I said, and as I said it I remembered those gin bottles, lined up like doomed soldiers standing at attention in their ranks. But something bugged me about those bottles, something different from the bouquets of glass I used to find around the house when my mother still lived at home.

“Is that it?” Kimberly said, pointing out her window.

My mind snapped back to the present. I looked down at the scrap of paper, looked up at a forlorn little storefront. “That’s it.” I managed to find a parking spot not too far off. “Now let me handle this, all right?”

“Suit yourself, V.”

“What’s this V stuff, anyway?”

“Like the president is W? You’re V.”

“And what are you?”

“I’m all that, V,” she said as she checked her lipstick in the mirror, “that’s what I am.”

Butch’s Sub Shop was a narrow little deli, with a brown linoleum floor and a few tables set out between the meat counter on one side and the tall glass-doored soda coolers on the other. At the register, a sharp-eyed older woman sat heavily on a stool, smoking a cigarette, gasping audibly for breath as she rang up a little girl and her ice pop. Other than the girl, the place was empty. Wiping down the deli counter was a burly dark-haired man with a mustache and a Red Sox baseball cap and above him a sign indicating all the varied sandwiches you could order so long as the sandwich you ordered was a sub.

“What can I get you guys?” said the man in a rough, Boston accent, his gaze taking in all of Kimberly.

“Are you Jimmy Sullivan?”

He turned his head and stared.

“You mind if we ask a few questions?”

His gaze slid to the woman at the register. “I’m working.”

“It won’t take long.”

“I’ve got work to do. What’s this about?”

“Tommy Greeley.”

Something passed over his face just then, a cloud of dark emotion, and then it flitted off and his eyes darted to the right, toward the back of the store, as if he were debating whether or not to run for it.

“What about him?” he said, finally. “He disappeared, must have been like twenty years ago.”

“We know. We have some questions about that.”

“And so you come to me?”

“You’re an old friend.”

“Was.” He went back to his wiping, leaning into it now, pressing hard with the rag as if to wipe away a stubborn stain, and then he stopped, let out a breath, deflated. “Hey, Connie,” he called to the woman at the register. “I need a talk to these people for a moment.”

The woman at the counter looked us over, coughed, and then nodded. Jimmy Sullivan waved us to a table. He swung his chair around and sat straddling the back, his arms crossed across the top rail, his chin buried in his arms.

“What are you guys, cops?” he asked.

“Do we look like cops?” said Kimberly.

“No, but you don’t look like arm breakers neither.”

“I should hope not.” Kimberly thumbed at me. “He thinks I look like a stewardess.”

“Maybe,” said Jimmy Sullivan.

“I’m a lawyer, Mr. Sullivan,” I said. “From Philadelphia.”

“That explains it then.”

“Explains what?”

“The way my skin crawled when you walked in.”

Kimberly laughed a flirty little laugh and batted her eyes. I was almost embarrassed for her, but Sullivan didn’t seem to react.

“So why are you guys asking about Tommy Greeley?”

“We’re looking into Mr. Greeley’s disappearance,” I said. “Trying to learn what happened to him.”

“A little late, isn’t it?”

“Better late then never. We thought we’d start with his childhood and we learned that you were an important part of it.”

“I knew him, so?”

“When was this?”

“We met in middle school, and then we was friends at Spellman.”

“What was he like?”

“I don’t know. He was just Tommy.”

“Mrs. Greeley seemed to imply you were a bad influence on him.”

His dark eyes darkened at that. “Is that what she said? She’s something, isn’t she, that Mrs. Greedy. How’s she doing, the old bat?”

“Still alive,” I said.

“Pickled, I’d bet. So that’s what this is all about. You want to hear about my bad influence. All right.” He took a deep breath, as if he were about to recite a poem in front of the class. “Tommy was a prince. I was the bad kid he hung around with. All princes have a bad kid they hang around with, don’t they? It’s like a rule. Didn’t Shakespeare write about that? I was the one always getting in trouble between the two of us, so of course I was the bad influence. How’s that? Is that what you wanted?”

“You have me confused with a guidance counselor,” I said.

Sullivan lifted his chin, narrowed his eyes.

“I don’t really care about the sad-sack story of your life, Jimmy boy. All I want to know is what happened to Tommy.”

“When he went off to college, we lost touch. Who did you say you was working for again?”

“I didn’t.”

“Yeah, didn’t think so. Look, what are you really after here? Why don’t you just tell me, get it over with.”

“Did you know he was selling drugs? Did you know he was indicted?”

“I’d heard something,” he said slowly.

“When was the last time you heard from him?”

“I don’t know. Before he disappeared.”

“Do you have any idea what happened to him?”

“None.”

“You weren’t involved in his going missing, were you, Jimmy?”

“Is that what you think?”

“I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking.”

He bit his lip for a moment, glanced at the old woman behind the counter who was giving him the eye. “Look. I might have been a bad influence, like old Mrs. Greeley said. But we was friends, Tommy and me. And like I said, he survived my bad influence. Maybe you should start wondering which of his high-class Ivy League friends he didn’t survive.” Sullivan pushed himself up from the chair. “I got to get back to work before breathless takes a bite out of my ass. Do yourselves a favor and go back to Philadelphia. I got nothing for you, understand? There’s nothing here. Nothing.”

He spread his arms wide and faced his palms to the ceiling, as if to emphasize the nothing, nothing in his hands, nothing up his sleeves. When he turned and made his way back to the counter he limped a bit and I noticed only then that one of his legs was shorter than the other.

When we stepped outside of the sub shop, Kimberly glanced back, through the front window, into the store. “He’s scared of something, isn’t he?” she said.

“Is he?”

“He was, like, all over me with his eyes before you mentioned Tommy Greeley’s name. After that I was buzz kill.”

“Maybe you’re not his type.”

“I’m his type, V. But I gave him my best little head-flick laugh and he barely glanced my way. Even my stewardess line didn’t raise an eyebrow. One thing I learned is, guys, they go crazy at the idea of a stewardess. It’s like genetic or something. Built into the chromosomes. Maybe there’s some zygote in pumps and a smart blue jacket offering headphones and a Coke to the sperm as they freestyle their way up to the egg, maybe that’s what does it. The stew could be a fifty-two-year-old grandma with bunions and still these boneheads are panting at the thought. But not this guy. The topic of Tommy Greeley scared him too much to even think about getting jiggy with me. Whatever it is, it’s got him freaked.”

“You think he was involved somehow in what was going down?” I watched Jimmy Sullivan as he went back to wiping the counter, glancing up now and then, squinting worriedly at us through the plate window.

“I don’t know, but he sure is scared about something,” said Kimberly. “And sad too. This Sullivan, he plays the Boston trash role, but he reads his Shakespeare, doesn’t he? King Henry IV Part One, starring Tommy Greeley as Prince Hal and Jimmy Sullivan as Falstaff.”

“I get all those Henrys confused,” I said, squinting at her. “Wasn’t the eighth guy the fat one with all the wives.”

“Ah, yaah. Read a book, why don’t you?”

I began to think about what she was saying, about how Jimmy had reacted. Mrs. Greeley had said he was a celebrity of sorts, but something had certainly come along to spoil everything. Now he was scared, absolutely, and sad, for some reason, and it seemed just then that Tommy Greeley was the cause of both. How could that be, twenty years gone by?

“Hey, you don’t have to look at me like that,” said Kimberly, misconstruing my thoughts. “I took a course or two in college, you know. I put in my time at the library.”

“That’s good to know, Kimberly, because I’m going to drop you off at the public library before I go visit Mr. Greeley.”

“Why the library?”

“I think we need to do a little research on our dear friend Jimmy Sullivan.”