_________________________
Tenean Beach, Dorchester
CAL AND DANTE stood out as black silhouettes upon the frozen beach, looking as if they’d been cut from hard angles of metal, and stared at the white, untouched expanse of snow. Even the track of the coroner’s wagon and the familiar tread of cops’ boots had been covered by the previous night’s storm.
Dante flicked his cigarette toward a clump of frozen seaweed but the wind returned it at his feet. “Hard to believe this is the same place we used to come as kids,” he said, turning to his left, where the small shuttered shower stalls and snack shack stood in stark relief against the ashen sky.
“I’m going to check the bathrooms,” Dante said as he began his walk toward the building, his coat whipping off his legs. Cal watched him and tried to suppress his suspicion. He shook his head. “Don’t you go fucking up before we even get started.”
THE FIRST DOOR that Dante checked was padlocked. The other, facing the ocean, appeared to be locked from the inside, but he stepped back and kicked it open. Cautiously, he stood before the darkness. It felt like looking into a mausoleum.
His mother had taken him and Claudia here all the time, June to September. His family—and Cal’s, too—didn’t have the money to vacation on the Cape, on one of the islands, or up north on some quaint little lake. This was all they’d had.
He turned and looked at the ocean and saw himself as a young boy swimming in the brownish harbor waves, all the way out to the piers where older boys dove in headfirst from twenty feet above. He saw his sister, all skin and bones, wearing a pink bathing cap. She was at the scummed shoreline with a stick, prodding a jellyfish that lay cooking in the sun. He saw his mother sitting cross-legged on a blanket, wearing that black bathing suit that was far too tight on her thick frame, accenting the rolls on her back and stomach, and him sitting next to her eating sandwiches hot from the sun. And then when the light of day began to soften, and the traffic of cars behind them became louder with the commute home, he remembered that sharp sense of melancholia as he watched families roll up their blankets and pack up their books and baskets and gather their children together, fearing that soon his mother would do the same. Thankfully, she always liked those moments at the end of the day when the beach was deserted and she could have a clear view of the harbor without anybody getting in the way. He and his sister would play by themselves, chasing gulls or playing in the dirty sand until the sun dipped toward the horizon and their mother called out to them, telling them it was time to pack up and head home to Fields Corner, where later in the evening he had a piano lesson with Mrs. Gilchrist, an old widow with severe rheumatoid arthritis whose hands stank of camphor and eucalyptus, and who, when he made a mistake, pinched him hard in the soft part of his upper arm until he got it right. He could see his mother standing in the sunset, hands cupped around her mouth as she called out in Italian and then even louder in English. And him sprinting the length of the beach toward the small peninsula covered in tall grass as if it were an enchanted place instead of a dumping ground for the factories just off the bay.
Dante blew into his hands and turned back around to face the darkness of the stalls. Now in winter, the place smelled of human feces mingled with cheap cigar. There had been people here, bums or kids perhaps—teenagers drinking and smoking, doing what teenagers did. He turned down the narrow hallway between the bathrooms and the locker rooms. Two windows were partially boarded up, the light forcing its way through the uneven plywood slats. He turned to the last window in the hallway and tore off a slat of wood that was nailed weakly to the window frame. It allowed in more light, enough for him to feel secure before opening the door to the men’s locker room.
He called out to the darkness as the door creaked open, and stepped inside. There were two high windows, and he went to one and pried off its shutters also. This one was nailed more securely. He put his hat back on and used both hands until the daylight glimmered through. Several blankets were crumpled in among sheets of newspaper and soot-stained towels. He pulled at one of the blankets, and the fetid stench of human shit that wafted up made him wince. He pulled out his lighter, moved its flame around with a shaking hand until he saw something in a tin coffee can. Around it were a few empty beer cans, a wine bottle, a woman’s sweater, soiled underthings. He picked up the sweater—it was nothing Sheila would have worn. He grabbed the can, walked back into a square of daylight, and, trembling, emptied the contents of the can onto a wooden bench beneath the window.
The shakes were coming stronger now and he licked at his lips. Wouldn’t it be nice to have it all laid out for him, a clean fix and some clean works, a quick taste in the darkness before he made it back out to Cal. Just a taste, something to help him carry on the rest of the day. He bit his lip and erased the thought. If there was any good time to fold, it wasn’t now.
Just a bunch of coins, a pouch of dry tobacco and rolling papers, a pencil, what looked to be a tooth, and a silver lighter. He raised it to the open window, and the morning light reflected off the silver. He flicked it open and the spark caught and flamed. He pocketed it, stood back in the doorway, and looked out over the beach, the distant view of Moon Island beneath a darkening sky, and then the open Atlantic with its waves ragged and threatening. He lowered his hat and headed back to the beach.
CAL PAUSED AND looked back the way he’d come, his footsteps small, dark divots in the blanket of white. He tracked them to the parking lot, where, even after the recent snowfall, he could make out the deep frozen rills left by the big trucks and tractor-trailers. He turned back and watched the waves crash and foam under the wooden pylons and against the sheet of rippling ice that last night would have been thicker, blacker, reaching farther out into the bay. He trudged across the frozen grass to the marine salvage and boatyard and stood looking at the beach.
Dante was standing there, staring at him. He called out to Cal, his voice fighting against the wind. “I found nothing.”
Two planes passed overhead in quick succession. Dante lowered his head and lit another cigarette.
“It’s like nothing ever happened here,” Cal said. “Beginning to think Fierro was right. She wasn’t killed here.”
Cal gestured for Dante’s cigarette, took a drag, and handed it back. “It’s too cold to stand around and bullshit. Let’s get going.”
In the car they sat in silence, the engine of the Chevy running. Cal watched Dante roll the lighter about in his hands and he resisted the impulse to tell him to stop. “We’ll hit some of these streets next.”
“I need to go Somerville,” Dante said, but wouldn’t look at him. The lighter seemed to move more frenetically from hand to hand.
“What the fuck’s in Somerville?”
“It’s more of a hunch than anything. It’s where Sheila used to live.”
“I thought she was living in Dorchester.”
“I have no idea where she was last living. I’m talking about where she used to live with Margo, a boardinghouse.”
Cal cupped his hands and blew into them, spread them open before the heating vents. “And you have to go now, right this fucking minute?”
“Yeah.”
“How long has it been since she was there?”
“I don’t know, a year and a half maybe. It used to be a safe place for Margo. I’m thinking maybe it was a safe place for Sheila, too.” Dante stared out the window. “Jesus, I just said it was a hunch.”
He was becoming morose, and Cal didn’t want him to steep in it, to start thinking of the past again, the mistakes that he’d made and that Cal knew he always reminded himself of.
“Okay,” he said, and shrugged. “I’ll hump around here, pop in on some of the neighbors. You take the car. I know how you are behind the wheel, so just take it slow, okay?”
They opened the doors and the wind tore at them. At the driver’s side, Cal paused. Dante slid in behind the wheel, clutched it tightly. “I hate to make you walk home,” he said.
“The walk will do me good. Just be careful. Look both ways, and go slow. You look like a fucking accident waiting to happen.”
Cal watched as Dante pulled the Fleetline out of the lot and rumbled off down the secondary road. He rubbed at his temple and cursed. It wasn’t Dante’s driving that worried him.