The Best American Mystery Stories 1997

One

Marla Van Dorn owned a condo in one of those bay-windowed brown stones on Commonwealth Avenue. The living room had a third-floor view of the Dutch-elmed mall as it runs eastward through Back Bay to Boston’s Public Garden. The view westward tends toward the bars and pizza joints of Kenmore Square and derelicts on public benches, so most people with bay windows look eastward for their views. As I was.

Behind me. Van Dorn said, “When the leaves are off the trees, you can see straight across Commonwealth to the buildings on the other side. Even into the rooms, at night with the lights on.”

I nodded. Ordinarily. I meet clients in my office downtown, the one with JOHN FRANCIS CUDDY, CONFIDENTIAL INVESTIGATIONS stenciled in black on a pebbled-glass door. But I live in Van Dorn’s neighborhood, so stopping on the way home from work at her place, at her request, wasn’t exactly a sacrifice.

She said, “It might be helpful if we sat and talked for a while fust, then I can show you some things.”

I turned and looked at her. Early thirties. Cosmo cover girl gone straight into a high-rise investment house. Her head was canted to the right. The hair was strawberry blond and drawn back in a bun that accented the cords in her long neck. The eyes were green and slightly almond-shaped, giving her an exotic, almost oriental look. The lipstick she wore picked up a minor color in the print blouse that I guessed was appropriate business attire in the dog days of July. Her skirt was pleated and looked to be the male to a jacket that I didn’t see tossed or folded on the burlappy, sectional furniture in the living room. The skirt ended two inches above the knee while she was standing and six inches farther north as she took a seal across a glass and brass coffee table from me. Van Dorn made a ballet of it.

The head canted to the left. “Shall I call you John’ or ‘Mr. Cuddy’?”

“Your dime, your choice.”

The tip of her tongue came out between the lips, then back in, like it was testing the wind for something. “John, then. Tell me, John, do you find me attractive?”

“Ms. Van—”

“Please, just answer the question.”

I gave it a beat. “I think you’re attractive.”

“Meaning, you find me attractive?”

“Meaning based on your face and your body, you’d get admiring glances and more from most of the men in this town.”

“But not from you.”

“Not for long.”

“Why?”

“You’re too aware of yourself. The way you move your head and the rest of you. I’d get tired of that and probably tired of trying to keep up with it.”

Her lips thinned out. “You’re a blunt son of a bitch, aren’t you?”

“If you don’t like my answers, maybe you shouldn’t ask me questions.”

A more appraising look this time. “No. No, on the contrary. I think you’re just what I need.”

“For what?”

“I’m being... I guess the vogue-ish expression is ‘stalked.’”

“There’s a law against that now. If you go to—”

“I can’t go to the police on this.”

“Why not?”

“Because a policeman may be the one stalking me.”

Uh-oh. “Ms. Van Dorn—”

“Perhaps it would be easier if I simply summarized what’s happened.”

She didn’t phrase it as a question.

I sat back, taking out a pad and pen, show her I was serious before probably turning her down. “Go ahead.”

She settled her shoulders and resettled her hands in her lap. “I was burglarized two months ago, the middle of May. I came home from work to find my back window here, the one on the alley, broken. I’ve since had security bars installed, so that can’t happen again. Whoever it was didn’t take much, but I reported it to the police, and they sent a pair of detectives out to take my statement. One of them... He called me on a pretext, about checking a fact in my statement, and he... asked me to go out with him.”

Van Dorn stopped.

I said, “Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Go out with him?”

“No. He was... unsuitable.”

“Did you hear from him again?”

“Yes. I’m afraid I wasn’t quite clear enough the first time I turned him down. Some of them just don’t get it. The second time, I assure you he did.”

“What’d you tell him?”

“I told him I don’t date black men.”

I looked at her, then said, “His name?”

“Evers, Roland Evers. But he told me I could call him Rollie.’”

“Then what happened?”

“Nothing for a week. I travel a good deal in my job, perhaps ten days a month. When I’d get back from a trip, there would be... items waiting for me, downstairs.”

When I came into her building, there had been a double set of locked doors with a small foyer between them and a larger lobby beyond the inner door. “What do you mean by ‘downstairs’?”

“In the space between the doors, as though somebody had gotten buzzed in and just dropped off a package.”

“Buzzed in by one of your neighbors, you mean?”

“Yes. The buzzer can get you past the outer door to the street but not the second one.”

“What kind of package?”

“Simple plain-brown-wrappers, no box or anything with a name on it.”

“What was in the packages?”

“Items of women’s... The first one was a bra, the second one panties, the third...” Van Dorn’s right hand went from her lap to her hair, and she looked away from me. “The bra was a peek-a-boo, the panties crotchless, the third item was a... battery-operated device.”

I used my imagination. “Escalation.”

“That’s what I’m afraid... That’s the way it appears to me as well.”

“You said the burglar didn’t take much.”

Van Dorn came back to me. “Excuse me?”

“Before, when you told me about the break-in, you said not much was taken.”

“Oh. Oh, yes. That’s right.”

“Exactly what did you lose?”

“A CD player, a Walkman. Camera. They left the TV and VCR, thank God. More trouble hooking them up than replacing them.”

“No items of... women’s clothing, though.”

“Oh, I see what...” A blush. “No, none of my... things. At first I assumed the burglary wasn’t related to all this, beyond bringing this Evers man into my life. But now, well. I’m not so sure anymore.”

“Meaning he might have pulled the burglary hoping he’d get assigned to the case and then have an excuse for meeting with you?”

Van Dorn didn’t like the skepticism. “Far-fetched, I grant you, but let me tell you something, John. You’ve no doubt heard burglary compared to violation. Violation of privacy, of one’s sense of security.”

“Yes.”

“Well, let me tell you. Living in this part of the city, being such a target for the scum that live off drugs and need the money to buy them and get that money by stealing. I’ve come to expect burglary. It’s something you build in, account for in the aggravations of life, like somebody vandalizing your Beemer for the Blaupunkt.”

Beemer. “I see what you mean.”

“I hope you do. Because this man, whoever it is, who’s leaving these... items, is grating on me a lot more than a burglary would. Than my own burglary did. It’s ruining my peace of mind, my sense of control over my own life.”

“You just said, ‘whoever it is.’”

“I did.”

“Does that mean it might not be Evers?”

“There’s someone else who’s been... disappointed in his advances toward me.”

“And who is that?”

“Lawrence Fadiman.”

“Can you spell it?”

“F-A-D-I-M-A-N. ‘Lawrence’ with a ‘W,’ not a ‘U.’” Van Dorn opened a folder on the coffee table and took out a photo. A nail the color of her lipstick tapped on a face among three others, one of them hers. “That’s Larry.”

Thirtyish, tortoiseshell glasses, that hairstyle that sweeps back from the forehead in clots like the guys in Ralph Lauren clothes ads. The other two people in the shot were older men, everybody in business suits. “How did you come to meet him?”

“We work together at Tower Investments.”

“For how long?”

“I started there three years ago, Larry about six months later.”

“What happened?”

“We were on a business trip together. To Cleveland of all places, though a lot of people don’t know what that city is famous for in an investment sense.”

“It has the highest number of Fortune 500 headquarters outside New York?”

Van Dorn gave me the appraising look again. “Very good. John.”

“Not exactly a secret. What happened in Cleveland?”

“A few too many drinks and ‘accidental’ brushings against me. I told him I wasn’t interested.”

“Did that stop him?”

“From the unwanted physical contact, yes. But he’s made some other... suggestions from time to time.”

“And that makes him a candidate.”

“For the items, yes.”

“You talk with Fadiman or his superior about sexual harassment?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Van Dorn got steely. “First, Larry and I are peers. I’m not his subordinate, not in the hierarchy and not in talent, either. However, if I can’t be seen to handle his... suggestions without running to a father figure in the firm, there would be some question about my capability to handle other things — client matters.”

“Your judgment. Evers and Fadiman. That it?”

“No.”

“Who else?”

“A bum.”

“A bum?”

“A homeless man. A beggar. What do you call them?”

I just looked at her again. “‘Homeless’ will do.”

Van Dorn said. “He’s always around the neighborhood. He stinks and he leers and he whistles at me when I walk by, even across the street when I’m coming from the Copley station.”

The subway stop around the corner. “Anything else?”

“He says things like ‘Hey, lovely lady, you sure look nice today,’ or ‘Hey, honey, your legs look great in those heels.’”

She’d lowered her voice and scrunched up her face imitating him. In many ways, Van Dorn was one of those women who got less attractive the more you talked with them.

I said, “Any obscenities?”

“No.”

“Unwanted physical contact?”

Van Dorn looked at me, trying to gauge whether I was making fun of the expression she’d used. She decided I wasn’t. “Not yet.”

“You have a name for this guy?”

“You can’t be serious?”

“How about a description?”

“Easier to show you.”

She stood, again making a production of it, and swayed past me to the bay window. “Cher here.”

I got up, moved next to her.

Van Dorn pointed to a bench on the mall with two men on it. “Him.”

One wore a baseball cap, the other was bareheaded. “Which one?”

“The one closer to us.”

“With the cap on?”

“Yes.”

“Does he always wear that cap?”

“No.”

“You’re sure that he’s the one?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s kind of hard to see his face under the cap.”

Van Dorn looked at me as though I were remarkably dense. “I couldn’t describe his face if I tried. I mean, you don’t really look at them, do you? It’s like... it’s like the eyes that never meet.”

“I don’t get you.”

“It was an exhibit, a wonderful one from Greece at the Met in New York the last time I was there. There were a dozen or so funeral stones from the classical period, stelae’ I think is the plural for it. In any case, they’ll show a husband and wife in bas relief, her sitting, giving some symbolic wave, him standing in front of her, sort of sadly? The idea is that she’s died and is waving goodbye, but since she’s dead, the eyes — the husband’s and the wife’s — never meet.”

I thought of a hillside in South Boston, a gravestone that had my wife’s maiden and married names carved into it. “And?”

“And it’s like that with the homeless, don’t you find? You’re aware of them, you know roughly what they look like — and certainly this one’s voice — but you never look into their faces. Your eyes never meet theirs.”

It bothered me that Van Dorn was right. “So, you think the guy in the cap might be leaving these items for you?”

“He’s around all the time, seeing me get into cabs with a garment bag. God knows these bums don’t do anything, they have all the time in the world to sit on their benches, planning things.”

“The items... the pieces of underwear in the packages, were they new?”

“Well. I didn’t examine them carefully, of course. I threw them away.”

“But were they new or old?”

“They seemed new.”

“And the device.”

The blush again. “The same.”

“Where would a homeless man get the money to buy those things new?”

“Where? Begging for it, stealing for it. For all I know, he’s the one who broke into this place. Fence the CD and such for whatever money he needed.”

I looked down at the guy in the cap. He didn’t look like he was going anywhere for a while. “Anybody else?”

“Who could be leaving the packages, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“How about a neighbor?”

“No.”

“Jilted boyfriend?”

“John, I haven’t had a boyfriend in a long time.”

She looked at me, catlike. “I do have some very good menfriends from time to time, but one has to be so much more careful these days.”

I nodded and changed the subject. “What exactly is it that you want me to do, Ms. Van Dorn?”

She swayed back to the couch, rolling her shoulders a little, as though they were stiff. “What I want you to do is pay all these men a visit, rattle their cages a little. Let them know that I’ve hired you and therefore that I treat this as a very serious issue.”

I waited for her to sit again. “It’s not very likely one of them’s going to break down and confess to me.”

“I don’t care about that. Frankly, I don’t even care who it is who’s been doing these things. I just want it to stop because I made it stop through hiring you.”

Through her getting back in control. “I can talk to them. I can’t guarantee results.”

A smile, even more like a cat now. “I realize that. But somehow I think you achieve results, of all different kinds, once you put your mind to it.”

I folded up my pad.

Van Dorn let me see the tip of the tongue again. “You may regret not finding me attractive. John.”

“Our mutual loss.”

The tongue disappeared, rather quickly.

Two

I left Marla Van Dorn’s building through the front doors, holding open the outer one for a nicely dressed man carrying two Star Market bags and fumbling to find his keys. He thanked me profusely, and I watched to be sure he had a key to open the inner door, which he did. Most natural thing in the world, holding a door open for someone, especially so they could just drop off a package safely for someone in the building.

Before crossing to the mall. I walked around the corner to the mouth of the alley behind Van Dorn’s block, the side street probably being the one she’d use walking from the subway station. The alley itself was narrow and typical, cars squeezed into every square inch of pavement behind the buildings in a city where parking was your worst nightmare. I moved down the alley, a hot breeze on my face, counting back doors until I got to the one I thought would be Van Dorn’s. There were bars across a back window on the third floor, but a fire escape that accessed it. Before the bars, nobody would have needed anything special to get up and in there, just hop on a parked car and catch the first rung of the escape like a stationary trapeze.

I walked the length of the alley and came out on the next side street, turning right and taking that back to Commonwealth. I crossed over to the mall and started walking down the macadam path that stretched like a center seam on the eighty-foot-wide strip of grass and trees. And benches.

The way I was approaching them, the guy in the baseball cap was farther from me than the other man, who looked brittly old and seemed asleep. The guy in the cap was sitting with his legs straight out, ankles crossed, arms lazing over the back of the bench. He wore blue jeans so dirty they were nearly black, with old running shoes that could have been any color and a chamois shirt with tears through the elbow. He was unshaven but not yet bearded, and the eyes under the bill of the cap picked me up before I gave any indication I was interested in talking to him.

The guy in the cap said, “Now who might you be?”

“John Cuddy.” I showed him my ID folder.

“Private eye. Didn’t think you looked quite ‘cop.’”

“You’ve had some experience with them.”

“Some. Mostly Uncle Sugar’s, though.”

The eyes. I’d seen eyes like that when I strayed out of Saigon or they came into it. “What’s your name?”

“Take your pick. John Cuddy, seeing as how I don’t have no fancy identification to prove it to you.”

I said. “What outfit, then?”

The shoulders lifted a little. “Eighty-second. You?”

“Uncle Sugar’s cops.”

The cap tilted back. “MP?”

“For awhile.”

“In-country?”

“Part of the while.”

He gestured with the hand closest to me. “Plenty of bench. Set a spell.”

“I won’t be here that long.”

The hand went back to where it had been. “Why you here at all?”

“A woman’s asked me to speak to you about something that’s bothering her.”

“And that would be?”

“You.”

A smile, two teeth missing on the right side of the upper jaw, the others yellowed and crooked. “Miss Best of Breed?”

“Probably.”

“Saw you going into her front door over there.”

“You keep pretty good tabs on the building?”

“Passes the time.”

“You seen anybody leaving things in the foyer?”

“The foyer? You mean inside the door there?”

“That’s what I mean.”

“Sure. United Parcel, Federal Express.”

“Anybody not in a uniform and more than once?”

“This about what’s bothering her?”

“Partly.”

“What does ‘partly’ mean?”

“It means she isn’t nuts about you grizzling her every time she walks by.”

The cap tilted down. “I don’t grizzle her.”

“She doesn’t like it.”

“All’s I do. I tell her how good she looks, how she makes my day better.”

“She doesn’t appreciate it.”

The guy tensed. “Fine. She won’t hear it no more, then.”

“That a promise?”

The guy took off the cap. He had a deep indentation scar on his forehead, one you didn’t notice in the shadow of the bill. “Got this here from one of Charlie’s rifle butts. The slope that clone it thought he’d killed me, but he learned he was mistaken, to his everlasting regret. When I was in, I found I liked hand-to-hand, picked up on it enough so’s the colonel had me be an instructor.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point. John Cuddy, is this. You come over here to deliver a message, and you done it. Fine, good day’s work. But you come back to roust me some more, and you might find you’re mistaken and regret it, just like that slope I told you about.”

“No more comments, no more whistles, no more packages.”

“I don’t know nothing about no packages. What the hell’s in them, anyways?”

“Things that bother her.”

“What, you mean like... scaring her?”

“You could say that.”

The head dropped, the arms coming off the back of the bench, hands between his knees, kneading the flesh around his thumbs. “That ain’t right, John Cuddy. Nossir. That ain’t right at all.”

Three

The Area D station that covers my neighborhood is on Warren Street, outside Back Bay proper. The building it’s in would remind you of every fifties black-and-white movie about police departments. Inside the main entrance, I was directed to the Detective Unit. Of eight plainclothes officers in the room, there was one Asian male, one black female, and one black male.

The black male looked to be about my size and a good stunt double for the actor Danny Glover. He was sitting behind a desk while a shorter, older white detective perched his rump on the edge of it. The black guy wore a tie and a short-sleeved dress shirt, the white guy a golf shirt and khaki pants. They were passing documents from a file back and forth, laughing about something.

I walked up to the desk, and the black detective said, “Help you?”

“Roland Evers?”

“Yeah?”

“I wonder if I could talk to you.”

“Go ahead.”

“In private?”

The white guy swiveled his head to me. Brown hair, clipped short, even features, the kind of priestlike face you’d tell your troubles to just before he sent you away for five-to-ten. “Who’s asking?”

I showed them my ID holder.

The white guy said, “Jesus, Rollie, a private eye. I’m all a-quiver.”

Evers said. “Can’t hardly stand it myself. Gus. Alright. Cuddy, what do you want?”

“Without your partner here might be better.”

Gus looked at Evers, but Evers just watched me. “Partner stays.”

Gus said. “You need to use a name, mine’s Minnigan.”

I decided to play it on the surface for a while. “You two respond to а В & E couple months back, condo belonging to Marla Van Dorn?”

Evers blinked. “We did.”

“The lady’s been getting some unwelcome mail. She’d like it to stop.”

Minnigan said. “We never made a collar on that, did we, Rollie?”

Evers said, very evenly, “Never did.”

Minnigan looked at me. “Seems we can t help you, Cuddy. We don’t even know who did it.”

“You spend much time trying?”

“What, to find the guy?”

“Yes.”

Minnigan shook his head. “She lost, what, a couple of tape things, am I right?”

I said. “Walkman, CD player, camera.”

“Yeah, like that. She never even wrote down the serial numbers. That always amazes me, you know? These rich people, can afford to live like kings and never keep track of that stuff.”

“Meaning no way to trace the goods.”

Evers said. “And no way to tie them to any of our likelies.”

“That’s alright. I’m not sure one of your likelies is the problem, anyway.”

Minnigan said. “I don’t get you.”

“Van Dorn’s not sure it’s the burglar who’s become her admirer.”

Evers said, “Who does she think it is?”

“She’s not sure.” I looked from Evers to Minnigan, then back to Evers and stayed with him. “That’s why I’m talking to you.”

Minnigan said, “We already told you, we can’t help you any.”

Evers said. “That’s not what Cuddy means, Gus. Is it?”

I stayed with Evers. “All she cares about is that it stops, not who’s doing it or why. Just that it stops.”

Minnigan glared at me.

Evers said. “You don’t push cops. Cuddy.”

“Is that what I’m doing?”

“You push a man, you find out he can hurt you, lots of different ways.”

“I’m licensed, Evers.”

“Licenses get revoked.”

“Not without some kind of cause, and when you stop to think about it, everybody’s licensed, one way or the other.”

Minnigan came down off the glare. “Hey, hey. What are we talking about here?”

Evers glanced at him, then back to me. “Okay, let me give you the drill. I ask the woman out one time, she says no’ like she maybe means ‘maybe.’ Fine. I ask her a second time, she gives me a real direct lecture on why she thinks the races shouldn’t mix. I got the hint, you hear what I’m saying?”

I looked at both of them, Minnigan trying to look reasonable, Evers just watching me with his eyes as even as his voice.

I nodded. “Thanks for your time.”

Outside the building, I took a deep breath. Hallway down the block, I heard Gus Minnigan’s voice say, “Hey. Cuddy, wait up a minute.”

I stopped and turned.

Minnigan reached me and lowered his voice. “Let me tell you something, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Rollie’s going through a divorce. I know I been there, maybe you have, too.”

“Widowed.”

“Wid — jeez. I’m sorry. Really. But look, he’s just out on his own a month, maybe two, when we answer the call on that Van Dorn woman. And you’ve seen her, who wouldn’t try his luck, am I right? But that don’t mean Rollie’d do anything more than that.”

“So?”

“So, cut him a little slack, okay?”

“As much as he needs.”

Minnigan nodded, like I meant what he meant, and turned back toward the Area D door.

Four

When I got off the elevator on the forty-first floor, I let my ears pop, then turned toward the sign that said TOWER INVESTMENTS, INC. The receptionist was sitting at the center of a mahogany horseshoe and whispered into a minimike that curved from her ear toward her mouth like a dentist’s mirror. She gave me the impression she’d hung up however you have to in that kind of rig, then smiled and asked if she could help me.

“Lawrence Fadiman, please.”

As she looked down in front of her, a man came through the internal doorway behind her. He wore no jacket, but suspenders held up pin-striped suit pants and a bow tie held up at least two chins. He looked an awful lot like one of the two older men in the photo Marla Van Dorn had shown me.

The receptionist pushed a button I could see and stared at a screen that I couldn’t. “I’m afraid Mr. Fadiman s out of the office for at least another hour. Can someone else help you?”

“No, thanks. I’ll catch him another time.”

As I left, I heard the older man say, “Fadiman’s not back yet?” and the receptionist say, “No, Mr. Tice.”

The lobby of the building had a nice café with marble tabletops over wrought-iron bases that Arnold Schwarzenegger would have had a time rearranging. I chose a table that gave me a good view of the elevator bank servicing floors 25 through 50. I’d enjoyed most of a mint-flavored iced tea before the man in the tortoiseshell glasses and clotted hair came through the revolving door from outside. He wore a khaki suit against the heat, the armpits stained from sweat as he checked his watch and shook his head.

I said, “Larry!”

He stopped and looked around. Seeing no one he knew; Fadiman started for the elevator again.

“Larry! Over here.”

This time he turned completely around. “Do I know you?”

“Only by telephone. John Cuddy.”

“Cuddy... Cuddy...”

“Mr. Tice upstairs said I might catch you if I waited here.”

The magic word in the sentence was “Tice,” which made Fadiman move toward me like he was on a tractor beam.

He said, “Well, of course I’d be happy to help. What’s this about?”

As we shook hands and he sank into the chair opposite me, I said. “It’s about those nasty little packages Marla’s been getting.”

Fadiman looked blank. “Marla Van Dorn?”

“How many Marlas you know, Larry?”

“Well, just—”

“The packages have to stop.”

“What packages?”

“The packages.”

“I don’t know what—”

“Larry. No more of them, understand?”

He looked blanker. If it was an act, he was very, very good. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have a clue as to what—”

“Just remember, Larry. I want them to stop, Marla wants them to stop, and most important of all. Mr. Tice would want them to stop if I were to tell him about them.”

Blank was replaced by indignant. “Is this some sort of... veiled threat?”

I stood to leave. “No, I wouldn’t call it ‘veiled,’ Larry.”

Five

When I got back to the office, I called her at Tower Investments.

“Marla Van Dorn.”

“John Cuddy, Ms. Van—”

“What the hell did you say to Larry?”

“Not much. If he isn’t the one who’s been sending the packages, he wouldn’t have guessed what was in them.”

“Yes, well, that’s great, but you should have seen him fifteen minutes ago.”

“What did he do?”

“He grabbed me by the arm, pulled me into a cubbyhole, and hissed at me.”

“Hissed at you?”

“Yes. At least, that’s what it sounded like. He told me he didn’t appreciate my ‘goon’ accosting him across a crowded lobby.”

I liked “accosted.”

“The lobby wasn’t that crowded.”

A pause. “What I mean is, I think you’ve rattled his cage enough.”

“He say anything else?”

“Just that if I stood in the way of any opportunities he had here, he’d know what to do about it.”

I didn’t like that. “Maybe I rattled a little too hard.”

“Don’t worry about it. I can’t say I feel sorry for him. Did you see the others?”

I told her about Evers and the guy in the cap.

“Well, then, I guess we just... wait and see if the packages stop?”

“I guess.”

“Unless you have something else in mind, John?”

“No.”

“Well then.” Brusquely. “I have things to do if I’m going to be out of here by six.”

She hung up. I pushed some papers around my desk for a while, trying to work on other cases, but I kept coining back to Marla Van Dorn. I turned over what I’d learned. Lawrence Fadiman may have confronted her at work, but he wasn’t likely to do anything violent there. Her condo was a better bet, and with the back window barred, that left the front entrance as maybe the best bet of all.

The paperwork on my desk could wait. I locked the office and headed home to change.

The guy in the baseball cap was already on the bench with the best view of Marla Van Dorn’s likely route from the subway station down the side street toward Commonwealth. Even with me wearing sunglasses and a Kansas City Royals cap of my own above and a Hawaiian shirt, Bermuda shorts, and black kneesocks below, I thought he might recognize me. So I sat with my Boston guidebook and unfolded map on the next bench up the mall, keeping my eye on the side street as best I could, which really meant just from the alley mouth to Commonwealth. I checked my watch. Five-forty.

While I waited, taxis stopped, dropping off some fares and picking up others. United Parcel and Federal Express trucks plied the double-parked lane, moving down a few doors at a time. Owners walked dogs and summer-school students played Frisbee and no-body thought to ask the obvious tourist if he needed any help.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the guy in the cap straighten. Looking over to the side street, I saw Marla Van Dorn walking, left hand holding a bag of some kind, hurrying a little as she approached the mouth of the alley, accentuating her figure under the cream-colored dress she wore.

Then one of the UPS trucks entered the intersection, its opaque, beetle-brown mass blocking my eyes for a frame. Before it passed, the guy in the ball cap was up and running hard, crossing Commonwealth toward the side street. As I got up, the UPS truck went by, and I could see the mouth of the alley again. But not my client.

I started running, too.

The guy in the cap disappeared into the alley, and I heard two cracks and a man’s yell and a woman’s scream. I drew a Smith & Wesson Chiefs Special from under the Hawaiian shirt and flattened myself against the brick wall at the mouth of the alley, using my free hand as a stop sign to the people starting to stream down the side street. The two cracks had sounded to me like pistol shots, and both the man and the woman in the alley were still making noise, him more than her.

That’s when I looked around the wall.

Marla Van Dorn was on her hands and knees, the front of the dress torn enough to see she was wearing a white bra and white panties. On his back on the ground in front of her was the guy in the cap, but he was bareheaded now, the cap still boloing near him from the hot breeze in the alley. The yelling was coming from Detective Gus Minnigan, whose right arm was pointing at an angle from his shoulder that God never intended, a four-inch revolver about twenty feet away from him.

I came into the alley fast. Minnigan clenching his teeth and yelling to me now. “The goddamn bum broke my arm, he broke my goddamn arm!”

Hoarsely, Van Dorn said, “This bastard... was waiting for me... grabbed me and pulled me into the alley.”

Minnigan said, “She don’t know what she’s saying!”

Van Dorn looked up at me. “He put his gun in my... between my legs and said. ‘What, you don’t care about who’s sending you the undies and the toy, I don’t mean that much to you?’”

I remembered Minnigan in the Area D station, glaring at me when I told him and Evers that.

Minnigan said, “She’s lying, I tell you!”

I said. “Shut up or I’ll break your other arm.”

Rocking back onto her ankles, Van Dorn pointed at the guy lying in front of her. “Then he came out of... nowhere. He ran right at us, against the gun... The shots... He broke this bastard’s arm and kicked the gun away, then fell. He came right through the bullets.”

I looked down at the guy in the cap. His eyes were open, but unfocused, and I knew he was gone. Two blossoms of red, one where a lung would be, the other at his heart, grew toward each other as they soaked the chamois shirt.

“Why?” said Van Dorn staring at the man’s face from communion height above his body. “Why did you do that?”

I thought, eyes that never meet, but kept it to myself.