There were several technical handbooks in the bookcase, a few Le Carré novels, and several by the surrealists Jay loved—Borges, García Márquez, Vargas Llosa, and Cortázar.
I gave the books and then the couch cushions a cursory once-over, found nothing, and moved into the bedroom.
Good private detectives are notoriously minimalist. They’ve seen firsthand what the random jottings on a piece of paper or the hidden diary can lead to, so they’re very rarely pack rats. More than one person has said that my apartment resembles a hotel suite more than a home. And Jay’s place, while far more plushly materialistic than my own, was still pretty impersonal.
I stood in the bedroom doorway as Angie lifted the mattresses on the antique sleigh bed, lifted the throw rug by the walnut dresser. The living room had been icy modern, all blacks and charcoals and cobalt-blue postmodern paintings on the walls. The bedroom seemed to be following a more naturalistic motif, the blond hardwood floor polished and gleaming under the small antique replica chandelier. The bedspread was hand-sewn and bright, the desk in the corner a matching walnut to the dresser and bureau.
As Angie moved to the desk, I said, “So when did you and Jay have drinks?”
“I slept with him, Patrick. Okay? Get over it.”
“When?”
She shrugged as I came over to the desk behind her. “Last spring or summer. Around there somewhere.”
I opened a drawer as she opened its counterpart beside me. “During your ‘days of unleashing’?” I said.
She smiled. “Yeah.”
“Days of unleashing” had been what Angie called her dating ritual after she separated from Phil—extremely short-term relationships with no attachments, dominated by as casual an approach as was possible to sex in the years since the discovery of AIDS. It was a phase, one she grew bored with far quicker than I had. Her days of unleashing had lasted maybe six months, mine about nine years.
“So how was he?”
She frowned at something in the drawer. “He was good. But he was a moaner. I can’t stand guys who moan too loud.”
“Me, either,” I said.
She laughed. “You find anything?”
I closed the last of the drawers. “Stationery, pens, car insurance policy, nothing.”
“Me either.”
We checked the guest bedroom, found nothing there, went back to the living room.
“What are we looking for again?” I said.
“A clue.”
“What kind of clue?”
“A big one.”
“Oh.”
I checked behind the paintings. I took the back off the TV. I looked in the laser disc tray, the multiple CD tray, the tape port in the VCR. All were distinctly lacking in the clue department.
“Hey.” Angie came back out of the kitchen.
“Find a big clue?” I said.
“I don’t know if I’d call it big.”
“We’re only accepting big clues here today.”
She handed me a newspaper clipping. “This was hanging on the fridge.”
It was a small item from a back page, dated August 29 of last year:
MOBSTER’S SON DROWNS
Anthony Lisardo, 23, son of reputed Lynn loan shark, Michael “Crazy Davey” Lisardo, died of apparent accidental drowning in the Stoneham Reservoir late Tuesday evening or early Wednesday morning. The younger Lisardo, who police believe may have been intoxicated, entered the grounds illegally through a hole in the fence. The Reservoir, long a popular, though illegal, swimming hole for local youths, is patrolled by two Marshals of the State Park Service, but neither Marshal Edward Brickman or Marshal Francis Merriam noticed Anthony Lisardo enter the grounds or saw him swimming in the reservoir during thirty minute patrols. Due to evidence that Mr. Lisardo was with an unidentified companion, police have left the case open pending the identification of Mr. Lisardo’s companion, but Captain Emmett Groning of the Stoneham Police stated: “Foul play has been ruled out in this case, yes. Unequivocally.”
The elder Lisardo refused to comment on this case.
“I’d say that’s a clue,” I said.
“Big or small?”
“Depends whether you measure by width or length.”
I got a good dope-slap for that on the way out the door.
13
“Who’d you say you’re working for?” Captain Groning said.
“Ahm, we didn’t,” Angie said.
He leaned back from his computer. “Oh. But just because you’re friends with Devin Amronklin and Oscar Lee of BPD Homicide, I’m supposed to help you?”
“We were kinda counting on it,” I said.
“Well, until Devin called me, I was kinda counting on getting home to the old lady, fella.”
It had been a couple decades, at least, since someone had called me “fella.” I wasn’t sure how to take it.
Captain Emmett Groning was five foot seven and weighed about three hundred pounds. His jowls were longer and fleshier than any bulldog’s I’d ever seen and his second and third chins hung down from the first like scoops of ice cream. I had no idea what the fitness requirements for the Stoneham Police Department were, but I had to assume Groning had been behind a desk for at least a decade. In a reinforced chair.
He chewed a Slim Jim, not eating it really, just sort of rolling it from side to side in his mouth and taking it out occasionally to admire his tooth marks and slick spittle residue. At least I think it was a Slim Jim. I couldn’t be sure, because I hadn’t seen one in a while—since around the same time I last heard the word “fella.”
“We don’t want to keep you from…the old lady,” I said, “but we’re sort of pressed for time.”
He rolled the Slim Jim across his lower lip, somehow managed to suck on it as he spoke. “Devin said you’re the two who settled Gerry Glynn’s hash.”
“Yes,” I said. “His hash was settled by us.”
Angie kicked my ankle.
“Well.” Captain Groning stared over his desktop at us. “Don’t have that kind of thing round here.”
“What kind of thing?”
“Your sicko killers, twisted deviants, your cross-dressers and baby rapers. No, sir. We leave that for all you in the Big City.”
The Big City was approximately eight miles from Stoneham. This guy seemed to think there was an ocean or two in between.
“Well,” Angie said, “that’s why I’ve always wanted to retire here.”