Cold Case (7 page)

Vanity: not quite one of the seven deadlies, but Mooney was seldom vain.

I merely raised an eyebrow. If I want help I usually invite him out for doughnuts; I don't drop by unannounced, uninvited.

“Break up with the boyfriend?” he asked.

The best defense is a sneak attack; Mooney knows.

I ignored his question. I wouldn't visit Mooney to discuss my sex life. He's aware of that.

“How's Sam?” he went on, mentioning another former flame since we were on the subject.

The subject of Sam Gianelli is a tender one. We weren't an item when he got injured in an attack on the Green & White garage, but we've been off-again, on-again lovers for years.

“Convalescent center,” I said. “Palm Beach. Place looks more like a hotel than a hospital, but Sam's pretty discouraged. They can't seem to get his left leg to match the right one. A quarter inch off here, an eighth off there. Doesn't sound like much, but makes it hell to walk. He'll be pleased you care.”

“You've been visiting?”

“Why?”

“Well, actually, I was wondering whether his family's got a contract out on you.”

I practically bit the tip off my tongue.

“Why?” I demanded.

“Triola nabbed a punk, thought he could use it to trade down to a misdemeanor.”

The guy at the drugstore, the one I'd assumed was DEA. The shoulder-holster man …

“I saved Sam's life,” I protested.

“A few of the Gianellis might not see it that way,” Mooney said.

“Then they're probably seeing about as well as you are. When'd you get the glasses?”

“It's these frigging reports. Play havoc with your close-up vision. Don't get any ideas. I can still outshoot you.”

“At any range,” I agreed easily. “You're a great shot, Mooney.”

“And you need a favor,” he said, nodding his round Irish face, his stubborn chin outthrust.

“How'd you guess?”

“Need it bad,” he said. “You compliment me. You smile at me. Not like baring your fangs, either. A real smile.”

“Mooney—”

“So tell me I'm wrong. Tell me you've dropped the dork headshrinker and you desperately want me to take you to Mary Chung's tonight for Suan La whatever she calls that stuff.”

“Mary's is open?”

“Opened months ago. You haven't been yet?”

“I didn't know.” Mary Chung's restaurant in Central Square, Cambridge, has been closed for years, ever since Biogen Labs made her landlord an offer he couldn't refuse. Rumors of reopenings abounded. An entire Internet interest group was devoted to the cult of perpetuating rumors. Mary was in China. Mary had applied for a liquor license, application denied. Mary'd signed the lease on 443 Mass. Ave. No, she hadn't. I'd long since given up, and believe me, my Mary Chung's habit was tough to break. I was a solid twice-a-weeker, a Suan La Chow Show junkie. Mary serves a hot and sour wonton soup—Suan La Chow Show—that defines scrumptious. My grandmother—rest her soul—should forgive me, but it's better than chicken soup for whatever ails you. Guaranteed to clear sinuses, drive away demons, halt meter maids on their appointed rounds. I almost forgot the reason for my visit in my eagerness to get to Central Square.

“I'll take you to lunch,” I told Mooney. “My treat.”

“Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the offer,” he said, “but everything that lady cooks gives me heartburn.”

“It's your taste in food that keeps us apart, Moon,” I said.

“Nothing wrong with vanilla,” he replied stubbornly.

“Yuck,” I said. “You probably eat Wonder Bread with mayonnaise, call it a sandwich. I confess: I want a favor. I've got a case that may or may not tie into an old disappearing act. Normally, I wouldn't think the department'd still have paper on anything this old, but it wasn't your run-of-the-mill missing persons.”

“We talking Judge Crater or Amelia Earhart?”

I sat on the edge of his desk. His visitor's chair is a joke, designed to torture the fannies of unwary bureaucrats, keep their visits brief.

“Very funny,” I said. “I'm mildly amused.”

“How old a case?”

I shrugged my shoulders. Might as well get it over with. “Twenty-four years.”

Mooney stared at me for a while before shaking his head sadly. “Did you take out an ad in
Soldier of Fortune?
‘Weird clients, weird cases? I specialize.' What you ought to do is get back on the force.”

“Like you don't get weirdos? Ten-year-olds killing nine-year-olds over a pair of Nikes?”

“Yeah, we get those,” he said. “Too many of them.”

“Let me take you away from all this, at least as far as Central Square,” I urged.

He shoved his chair away from his desk. Floorboards creaked. “Twenty-four years? Is my hearing going bad or what?”

“About as bad as your eyesight.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Take it easy. I just want to know who handled the investigation. I want to know if it's ongoing or closed.”

I want to know why a man claiming to be related to the Camerons told me so many lies. I want to know the origin of the document I'm toting around in a Star Market plastic sack
.

“Carlotta, cops here do their twenty, get down on their knees, thank the Lord, and retire full pension.”

“Not all of them,” I said.

“A few have heart attacks, get shot,” he said. “Buried.”

“Mooney, come on, some of these guys are married to the badge. Sure, it didn't start out that way—the wife leaves, they never see the kids. What are they gonna do with their retirement? Sit in a motel room till they decide to eat a bullet? Who's been here longest, that's the guy I want you to introduce me to.”

“It wasn't run-of-the-mill,” he said slowly.

“Right.”

“Then before we go any further, you name the case. Some pots we don't stir.”

“Judge Crater,” I said.

No reaction. No hint of a smile.

“Thea Janis,” I said reluctantly, because I've become reluctant to tell a cop anything I don't absolutely have to. I spelled it for him, because of the odd first name and the variety of spellings suggested by the second.

“Thea Janis,” Mooney repeated. I let him sit and worry the name for a while, see if it jangled his memory the way it had mine. “Hang on. Let me call Cold Case.”

“Cold Case?”

“They're new. One sergeant and two dicks. They sift through unsolved files, revisit scenes, find missing witnesses. Sometimes, after eight, nine years, somebody's willing to talk.”

He wedged the receiver between shoulder and ear, dialed.

Mooney's office is one of the few enclosed spaces—other than the rest room—at the old Area D station in Southie, home of the homicide squad. It's more attractive than the bathroom, but not much. It looks like somebody's about to move in or move out, never like a regular place somebody works. There isn't a single poster on the walls. Not a photo on the desk. Maybe I ought to buy the man a plant, watch it wither and die of neglect.

I listened to Mooney chat. Mostly he grunted, “Uh huh, uh huh.”

After he hung up he turned to me. “Cold Case is working a nineteen-year-old open murder,” he said. “Little boy strangled and dumped behind a liquor store. They've got no file on Thea Janis.”

“There ought to be a mountain of paper on this, Mooney.”

“Why?”

He was a brick wall. I wouldn't get anything unless I told him. “Under another name,” I said. “Dorothy Jade Cameron.”

“Cameron,” Mooney said, snapping his fingers with satisfaction as the name clicked. “Whoa, have you been blowing smoke at me? Are you looking for whosis? Wonder boy's wife? Marissa Cameron?”

“Is she missing?”

He ignored my question. “You're telling me the Cameron family wants some old police business rehashed? Now? Bad timing, if you ask me.”

It was my turn to ignore his question. “Who'd be able to give me horse's mouth stuff? If the cop in question's retired, I could track him down.”

“Carlotta, do you have a legitimate interest here?”

“Not to get unpleasant, but none of your business, Moon.”

“Could be my business, Carlotta. The Cameron family's involved in just about every slice of Boston government. Isn't there a Cameron in the DA's office?”

“Scared he'll fire you?”

“Politicians, Carlotta, they can cook you so fast you don't know you're done till they yank the fork out.”

“I don't see why any Cameron would object to making sure their sister or cousin or whatever got a decent investigation when she disappeared twenty-odd years ago.”

I worried my lower lip with my teeth. I'd almost said “died.” “Died” twenty-odd years ago.

“Disappeared,” he said, shaking his head. “I don't recall it.”

“She was a writer,” I said.

“Yeah. Thea Janis. That does ring a bell. But twenty-four years ago I was paying my government's respects to Southeast Asia.”

“So that's why you don't have total recall, Moon.”

“This has nothing to do with the current hoo-hah,” he said. “I've got your word on that.”

I looked him straight in the eye and told the truth. “Everything I know about the governor's race I read in the paper.”

He stared back, standing, giving himself a slight height advantage. “Woodrow MacAvoy,” he said.

I asked him to spell it.

“Surly old cuss,” he continued. “That's the main reason I remember him. Retired a sergeant, swore he should have been superintendent. He handled the politicals, the hot seat stuff. Good public speaker. Could really sling the bull with the crime reporters. They'd think they had the whole story, but it was all flim-flam and mirrors.”

“If he was that good, I'm surprised he didn't get to be superintendent,” I said.

“Does Mary cook anything that won't burn my lips raw?”

His question caught me by surprise.

“You'll go?” I asked.

“She do any food that's not spicy?”

“Sesame lemon chicken. Crab Rangoon. Trust me.”

“Always,” he said. “That's why I'm driving.”

8

We took Moon's battered Pontiac instead of an unmarked unit, which meant I had to enter via the driver's side and slide across the cracked leather bench. His passenger door is nonoperational, creased and rusted from an ancient accident. He holds to the Boston school of thought on auto repair: A perfect car equals a perfect target, so why bother?

In all other ways, he is atypical.

Mooney will never get a speeding ticket, never earn a hundred-buck fine for a moving violation. Not because traffic cops show professional courtesy to homicide cops. Not because it's tough to get cited in this town of perpetual scofflaws. The man drives so conservatively I find it hard to credit his claim of native birth. Boston drivers are tough and scrappy. They change lanes without signaling; they turn left from the right-hand lane in front of oncoming traffic. Mooney drives like a respectable Midwesterner. Whereas I, born in Detroit, have picked up all the Bostonian tricks of the trade. Take me out of Boston, I can hardly drive. Cops nail me. Citizens honk.

I fidgeted, adjusting the window up a smidgen, down an inch, searching for the perfect blend of pollution and breeze. My hands itched for the steering wheel, my foot for the brake. I actually fastened my seat belt. I was terrified we'd get rear-ended; Moon stops for amber lights.

He remembered that Thea Janis was a writer, but I doubted he'd read
Nightmare's Dawn
—touted as a girls' “coming of age” story—word for word. More likely, he'd been present when a used paperback was passed around, dog-eared to the sexy pages.

Hell, my copy fell open to them automatically.

Moon refused a single taste of Suan La Chow Show, but admitted that Crab Rangoon had its charms. I'd have opted for the train, but he insisted on chauffeuring me to Harvard Square, which was far enough out of his way and so unlike his usual manner that I wondered if he'd joined me for lunch just to see for himself whether or not I was being tailed by a mob hitman.

He dropped me where Mass. Ave. meets Brattle, earning an upraised finger from three drivers.

I jaywalked across the street, spinning a quick three-sixty in front of the international newsstand, gawking like a tourist easily awed by red brick and pricey retail. I didn't spot Mr. Windbreaker. The line at CopyCop
was
half a mile long, as Roz had predicted. Thirty-seven minutes later, I sighed with relief as I tucked two copies of “Thea's” brand-new manuscript into a CopyCop envelope, the original notebook into the original manila envelope, the whole package back into the plastic sack.

A phone booth beckoned. Not exactly a booth, but a machine wall-mounted to a sheltered corner of a bank. I didn't have a pocketful of coins so I tried collect.

It's automated. I did the Miami area code preceded by the operator's 0. Canned accentless voices took charge. I figured Vandenburg wasn't going to accept anything collect from Carlotta, so I murmured “CRG” into the appropriate time lapse on the tape. The sleaze would eat any charges from Carlos Roldan Gonzales.

That call got through immediately.

“No names,” I said as a greeting.

“Jeez—”

“Don't hang up. Have you heard from him?”

“No. Stay the hell out of it.”

The line went dead. So much for news on the Colombian cartel front.

I watched a guitar picker with a glass eye and shaky fingers try to wheedle quarters for a song. He was too old and too bad to be playing on the street. I put fifty cents in his battered guitar case. He had two missing teeth up top.

I walked along Brattle, aiming for the Avon Hill School. I didn't expect a full complement of teachers and students hanging around in summertime, but I might find someone minding the store. I'd get to view the institution where Thea had spent over a year of her life. If I could see what Thea had seen, maybe it would help me decode a line or two of her prose, her poetry.