47

The Swampscott force was not as gullible, not as trusting as Edith Foley. I should have brought them cookies, doughnuts. The gossipy public relations cop was not on duty and the small force didn’t have time to spare on ancient dropped charges, even if they did involve the numerous and often troublesome Foley clan. Charges were made and dropped all the time. Hadn’t I read Miranda?

Well, yes, I had, but I’d wanted something a little more concrete, names and places, and dates. Dates, foremost.

It was dark by the time I quit waiting for a friendly cop with time to spare and ventured home. I hesitated, holding my keys, decided to try the back door. I wanted to see whether it had been fixed. I’d given Roz instructions and cash. If the two-by-fours were still holding the door in place, I’d take great pleasure in kicking the whole shebang down.

Maybe if I vented my anger in door-kicking, I wouldn’t charge into Donovan’s house, tell him precisely what I thought of his stupid overly protective gesture, hiring a gumshoe to guard same. I could almost hear his rationalization: You’d never have let me if I’d told you. Right. But that didn’t make secrecy the answer. A secret bodyguard was worse than no bodyguard. A secret bodyguard could get killed. Mistaken for a mythical mob hit man.

Instead of kicking the door I almost tripped over the tiny girl as she ran from under my back porch. She’d been hiding near the garbage bins. She smelled like she might have dined from one.

“Pix?”

“Yeah. I need to talk to you.”

“Talk.”

“There’s somebody at the shack needs you.”

“The shack burned down,” I said.

“Near the shack, on the beach.”

“Alonso?”

“Can you come?”

“Is it guarded?”

“Not now. Can you come?”

“Yeah.”

“Now? It has to be right now.”

“Get in the car and crank down the window.”

“Food?” she asked.

“We’ll stop on the way.”

The door had been repaired. Pleasantly surprised, I rang the bell three times, then another three till Roz opened up.

“What?” she said indignantly. “You forgot your damned key?”

“I’m in a hurry. Messages.”

“Thanks for getting the door fixed, Roz. And Paolina called.”

“Whoa. She’s not allowed to use the phone at camp.”

“She said a counselor drove her into town to pick something up. I don’t know.”

“What did she want?”

“I guess she’s not having that great a time. Wanted to know if you could come out and get her.”

“Tonight?”

“Yeah.”

No telling when Pix might decide to take it on the lam again.

I said, “Can’t tonight. If she calls again, tell her I’ll make it soon. Isn’t Friday the last day? See if she can hold out five more days.”

“Will do.”

“And, Roz?”

“Yeah?”

“Get my thirty-eight out of the closet.”

“Is it loaded?”

“I hope so. It’s more useful that way.”

Roz, for all her skills, doesn’t like guns and doesn’t drive. I could have asked her to track down one of her boyfriends who did, drive up to New Hampshire in the middle of the night, but the way Roz looks, let alone the way most of her guys look, would any camp counselor release a girl of Paolina’s tender years into her care?

Tender years.

The years hadn’t been tender to Pix. Nor had the brief time since I’d seen her. She’d acquired a nasty bruise on one cheek, a split lip. She wasn’t talking about how they’d happened. At a Route 1 McDonald’s, she squeezed two Big Macs and a large order of fries into her tiny frame, slurped a chocolate shake so gelatinous the straw made sucking sounds like a swamp.

I drove, listening to tapes I’d jammed into the boom box. Trying to soothe myself with timeless blues.

“Got a mortgage on my body, lease taken on my soul,” sang Robert Johnson, dead at twenty-eight.

I couldn’t get my mind off Woodrow MacAvoy. What would they write on his tombstone? What verse of Scripture had Edith Foley chosen for her daughter’s memorial?

“Leave your car here,” Pix said, as we passed a small realty office with an unlit parking nook. I remembered passing it before. It was about half a mile from Marblehead Neck, off Ocean Avenue.

“Why?”

“It’s safer.”

“Alonso can stop running. I know a cop who’ll make sure he’s treated well.”

“I can’t bring anybody but you.”

“I promise.”

“You can’t bring a car.”

“Pix, are you trying to set me up?”

“You fed me,” she said. “I don’t set up anybody gives me money, drugs, or hamburgers.”

I believed her.

We walked the causeway side by side. Her legs had to work hard to keep up with my stride.

“Is any of the shack still standing?”

“Not much. Use the steps from the lane. Did you bring a flashlight?”

“Yeah.”

“You left your gun in your car?”

I’d left the forty locked in the glove compartment.

“Am I going to need one?” I asked.

“No. I promise.”

She didn’t seem to expect my promise in return. I withheld it. The .38, my old Chief’s Special, felt fine in its waist clip.

The ground around the burned shack was churned with footprints, gouged with the spray from heavy hoses. I had to watch my footing on the uneven approach. Smoke no longer rose from the scattered boards, but the smell of fire was strong, acrid. A throat-closing stench. Yellow “Do Not Cross” tape marked the shack as a crime scene.

I heard a noise, the faint, throat-clearing announcement of another human presence. I spun to face it.

The woman seated on a nearby rock wore a wide-brimmed hat. For a moment I had the foolish urge to ask Pix if this was the “real woman” with whom Alonso was currently sleeping.

Too old, I thought dismissively.

I studied her more closely. Dear God, it seemed like I’d known her all my life. I’d seen two versions of her face, aged and thin, aged and fat.

It was her eyes I recognized. Only her eyes.

“Pix,” I said.

“I didn’t lie.”

“What about Alonso?”

“She wants to help. I believe her. I told her about you. Did I do right?”

“Yeah, Pix. Go over and sit on the steps now. Okay? Warn us if you see anybody coming.”

“You think Alonso will be back?”

When I didn’t answer, she walked away.