The Pandora Key aka The Hostage Room

2

THERE WERE TWO WAYS TO GET TO QUINCY. YOU EITHER took the red line on the T, or you sat on I-93 along with everyone else trying to go south through the Big Dig construction. I decided not to waste my hour in traffic, so the minute I hit the end of the on ramp and inched into the flow, I grabbed my cell phone and turbo-dialed Dan.

“Majestic Airlines, Dan Fallacaro.”

“Hey, what are you doing?”

“I’m working, Shanahan. I don’t have time.”

“Wait…”

“What?”

“You’re going to want to hear this.” I filled him in on how I’d found Harvey in a clinch with his ex-wife.

“Are you shitting me? You’re talking about our Harvey, right?”

I was talking about our Harvey. Dan Fallacaro was the mutual friend who had introduced us. Dan had worked for me during my brief but eventful tenure as the general manager for Majestic Airlines at Logan. The murky circumstances of my departure from that job had left me virtually unemployable in the airline business. The circumstances weren’t murky to Dan, and he had worked hard to help me get started in my new life as a private investigator. He knew a forensic accountant who had done some financial work for him in the matter of his divorce from his lunatic ex-wife. Harvey Baltimore needed a partner with fresh legs, or…just legs. I needed work. Dan had made the match.

“She was macking on him?”

“Sitting on his lap,” I said, “right there in his wheelchair.”

“Woo-hoo! Harvey’s getting some. Good for him.”

“I don’t know about that.” I was stuck behind a belching bus, so I started plotting a lane change. “But if I hadn’t interrupted them…”

“I wonder if he can still do it.”

“If you want to know that, you’ll have to ask him yourself.”

“Is she hot? She never looked hot in that picture he’s got. She looked like a girl in my catechism class in ninth grade.”

“Rachel is Jewish.”

“Yeah, but with that long, wavy dark hair parted down the middle, she looked just like Katey Ellen O’Meara.”

“She doesn’t look anything like that now. She looks like a tomboy.” The Volvo next to me was lagging in the pace, so I nosed the Durango in front of him. “She has really short hair…no makeup…basketball shoes.”

“It’s hard to look hot in high-tops.” I heard his phone ringing, the one that wasn’t cellular, and realized I had caught him in a rare moment in his office. Usually, he was out walking his operation, monitoring the ticket counter, or lifting tickets at the gate. The labor agreement prevented him from performing the union’s work on the ramp. That didn’t keep him from telling them how to do it.

Molly’s voice floated in from the background. “You’re late for your ten-thirty, Danny. Get your ass over to Mass-port before they call me again.” She hadn’t changed a bit since she’d been my assistant.

“Tell Molly I said hi.”

There was a pause. “She says to get off the goddamn phone and let me get to my meeting.”

“Just start walking. That’s what cell phones are for.”

His sigh was long and loud, but he didn’t hang up. I heard his footsteps echoing down the long hallway, the marked change as he opened the heavy door and emerged into the Majestic concourse, and then the noise of airline travel-thick and anxious and harried and, every now and then, joyous again. I still missed it.

“What do you want, Shanahan?”

“I want to know what you know about this woman.”

“Who, Rachel? Not a fucking thing. I never understood how those two got together in the first place.”

“They met when he was working on an insurance fraud case. She was his contact in accounting at the insurance company here in Boston. He saw her, he fell in love, and he never went back to Baltimore. After that, as far as I can tell, he devoted every ounce of his being to her personal and professional fulfillment. He helped her get her CPA, he helped her get a job with one of the big six accounting firms, they got married, and I have no idea if it was quid pro quo. Having met her, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Did you ever see the asshole she married? He’s fifteen years younger than Harvey, he can still walk, and from the looks of him, he probably fucks like a bull.”

“You met Gary?”

“No, I saw him. It was when Harvey was working on my case. I never told you this?”

“Nope.” I could feel one of Dan’s stories coming on.

“I’m over there in Brookline for a meeting with Harvey. This was maybe five years ago. I drag him out to the taco place for lunch. I’m telling him how my ex is trying to screw me to the wall. He looks over my shoulder out the window, and I think he’s bitten down on a jalapeño or something. Turns out he’s looking at this cocksucker standing out on the sidewalk talking to some other guido. What’s his name? It started with an R, or maybe an F.”

“Ruffielo.”

“Yeah. I thought Harvey was going to cry right there in the restaurant. They live in his neighborhood, you know. He probably has to see him all the time. Poor guy.”

“Not anymore.” I rolled forward about one car length before we stopped again. “They moved.”

“Let me ask you something, Shanahan. What the fuck did you call me for? You already know more about these two than I do.”

“Well…” That was a good question. “I don’t know. I’m sitting in traffic heading down to Quincy, and I guess I wanted to talk to someone about Harvey.”

“What the fuck’s in Quincy?”

“Rachel’s family photos and some jewelry. She says her husband’s abusive, she’s afraid of him, and she needs someone with a firearm to go down and get her stuff out of their house.”

“What if you run into him?”

“As I said, someone with a firearm. It wouldn’t be so bad, though, if I got a chance to talk to Mr. Rachel. I would feel a lot better if I knew he was beating her.”

“Excuse me?”

The traffic had spaced out a little, so I had to pay more attention to what was in front of me. “I just want to know if she’s lying. I don’t want her to break Harvey’s heart all over again. I mean, if she didn’t want to take care of him before, why would she come back now that he’s sicker? What do you think she wants?”

“It’s none of your business, Shanahan.”

“Yes, it is. If she’s lying to him-”

“You’ll what? Smack her around?”

“No, but-”

“Jesus Christ, the guy is on his last legs.”

“He’s not.” The car in front of me stopped. I hit the brakes and lurched forward against my seat belt. “With his medication and his therapy-”

“He’s gonna die, Shanahan. Let him have a little fun before it’s too late. I gotta go.” Click.

I snapped the phone shut and tossed it onto the seat next to me. Dan wasn’t a doctor. He liked making these proclamations. He wasn’t as close to the situation as I was. It wasn’t until I heard the horns-long, loud, and angry-that I realized the cars in the lanes around me were flowing smoothly. I was the only one standing still.

Streets in Quincy were much like those in Boston-all one way the wrong way, rotaries to send you flying off in the wrong direction, and street signs that were either nonexistent or well concealed.

After multiple wrong turns, U-turns, and several minutes craned over the steering wheel, squinting through the windshield, I found Rachel’s house. It was one in a row of tightly packed two-story boxes with painted siding, tiny yards, and concrete porches. Some had the side-by-side front doors that marked them as two-family homes. Some had front yards fenced with chain link. All had burglar bars on the windows. Rachel’s address, 134 Concord, was one of the doubles.

Parking was no easier to find. I ended up at a meter two blocks down on the busy street that crossed Rachel’s. I got out and walked past gas stations, liquor stores, pizza joints, and a White Hen Pantry, the local version of 7-Eleven. It was a long way from the large homes and tree-shaded boulevards of Brookline.

On the way to Rachel’s front door, out of habit, I looked closely at every parked car. I looked at all the windows in the facing houses. I looked for anyone or anything that didn’t belong. It was no comfort that I seemed to be the only one in that category.

No one answered the door at 134 Concord, which didn’t surprise me, given how dark that side of the house was. I walked around to the back. All of the windows on Rachel’s side had the blinds closed. I looped back to the front door. When no one answered another knock, I slotted the key Rachel had given me into the lock. It wouldn’t turn.

I pulled it out, pushed it back, and was trying again when the door at 136 swung open, and a blond teenage girl poked her head out. “Who are you?”

In spite of her droopy eyelids, she managed to look nervous. She had good reason to be wary, because it wasn’t even noon, and she was stoned. Her pupils were pinpoints, and the fragrance of the hemp floated out from behind her. I could hear the sound of more like her inside, chattering and laughing, their voices loud over the sound of some kind of reggae rap music.

“I’m not a cop,” I said.

“What?”

I looked down at the useless key in my hand. “Could I ask you some questions?”

Her eyes were less droopy now. “What about?”

“You can come out, or I’ll come in, but if you don’t close the door, the whole neighborhood’s going to get high. I’m not here to hassle you.”

She glanced behind her as she stepped out, pulling the door closed behind her.

“Thank you,” I said. “What’s your name?”

“Kimberly.”

I told her who I was and showed her my license. She didn’t seem impressed. “Do you know where the Ruffielos are?”

“I had nothing to do with it. I didn’t see her. I didn’t hear her-”

“Who are you talking about?”

“Rachel.”

“What about her?”

“I went out to party, I came home, and she was gone, and all her stuff was gone, and on account of that I got grounded for a month. It wasn’t my job to watch her.”

“Are you saying she moved?”

“She snuck out in the middle of the night with three months’ rent due. My mom had a freaking attack when she got home and found out.”

I started to feel an I-told-you-so come on, which made me feel alternately smug about Rachel and sad for Harvey. “When did she leave?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a week?”

“What about her husband?”

“Gary?” A seductive smile crossed her face, and I got a whiff of something unseemly. “He left three days after school started.” Which would have been September, almost eight months ago. It was interesting that she remembered it to the day.

I checked the address on the door. I looked at my scribbled notes. I looked at Kimberly. “That means no one lives here?”

“It’s empty.”

“Any idea where Rachel moved to?”

“Don’t know. Don’t care.” She had fallen back into that state of mellow induced by the weed, and perhaps thoughts of Gary.

“Why not?”

“Because she was a stone-cold bitch, always pounding on the wall and yelling at me to be quiet. Before Gary left, they made more noise than I did.”

“Doing what?”

“Fighting. All the time.”

“She told me Gary abused her,” I said. “Does that sound right?”

She let out a harsh laugh, one that was much too knowing for someone her age. “The other way around, maybe. Gary’s a sweetheart. He was always doing for her, or trying to. She was the one always yelling at him and putting him down.” Kimberly had been slowly drifting toward the door. She wanted to get back to her party. “Can I-”

“Yeah, just one more second.” I held up the key Rachel had given me. “I would like to get inside to look around. Any ideas on how I can do that?”

“My mom had the locks changed.”

“You’re mom’s the land-”

“You can’t talk to her. You can’t.” It wasn’t up for discussion.

“I won’t tell her anything. I just need-”

“No, she’s working, and she doesn’t know any more than I do. But there’s-” She crossed her arms, rolled her head back, and went all teenager cagey. “If I give you something, will you go away and promise to leave us alone?”

“Yes.”

“Wait here.”

She went inside, reached up next to the door, and came out with a set of keys on a ring. She held up the one marked with a blue rubber rim. “These are the new keys. You can go in and look around, but you have to promise-”

“I won’t say anything.”

“Just leave them inside, and don’t lock the door.”

I reached for the ring and nearly had my arm severed by the force of the slamming door.

It was, indeed, the blue key that unlocked the front door. I flipped on the overhead light and beheld the empty space. It looked like a place that had been quickly abandoned, which was to say dirty. Dust bunnies floated around the empty hardwood floors, and something in the musty air made me sneeze. Bent nails and long gashes marked where pictures had hung on the walls-walls that throbbed from the pounding beat of the party next door. Rachel might have been a bitch, but she hadn’t been wrong about the noise.

A quick spin through the upstairs bedrooms turned up nothing but a couple of lonely wire coat hangers in one of the closets and an explanation for what was making me sneeze. There was a cat litter box in the bathroom. Also a used bar of soap in the shower and a bunch of balled-up tissues and used Q-tips, which might have been of interest if I were a forensic scientist with a lab. As it was, it pissed me off all the more to be looking at Rachel’s trash. Needless to say, there were no family photos or jewelry to retrieve. There was no abusive husband. There was nothing that even remotely resembled the story Rachel had told.

By the time I got downstairs and found all the kitchen cabinets standing open, there was no force on earth that could have kept me from going through and slamming every one of them. Childish but necessary. The same for kicking the large garbage bins in the alley that turned out to be empty as well.

I went back inside, through the house to the front room where the window looked out on the street. I split the blinds to peek through. There was a black sedan parked halfway down the block that hadn’t been there when I’d come in. It had two guys in it and was just nondescript enough to be cops. Maybe that’s what she was doing. Maybe I was supposed to be a decoy.

The small scope I carried on my key chain was about the size of a large pocketknife. I used it to find the sedan’s license plate and copied the number in my notebook.

I had to call Harvey, but first I had to think of a delicate way to explain to him that the woman he still cared about was, and probably always had been, a scheming bitch. I pulled out my phone, stood in the front room, and stared at it. I went and stood in the kitchen and stared at it some more. Then I sat on the stairs with my chin in my hand and thought some more. There just isn’t much to work with in an empty house when you’re trying to stall. I put the phone away. This was news better served up in person.