Coyote

I couldn’t sleep when I got home. Big surprise. Roz and Lemon had given up on me and retired for the night, or so the blackness of the third-floor windows seemed to indicate.

No further messages on the machine. I rewound the tape and listened to Manuela’s plea, trying to match tone and timbre to the voice I’d heard in my office. I played it again. And again. When I caught myself nodding off, I removed the cassette and slipped it into my handbag.

Upstairs I got ready for bed, splashing noisily in the bathroom sink, humming to crack the silence, undressing and donning one of the men’s V-necked T-shirts I prefer as nightwear because they’re cheap and comfy with no lacy things that itch. I put on my red chenille bathrobe to ward off a chill that was mainly interior, sat cross-legged on the floor, and yanked the hardshell guitar case out from under the bed.

I used to worry about insomnia, but nobody ever died from it that I know. The best cure I’ve come up with is my old National steel guitar.

Me and the devil, we’re walking hand in hand.

I couldn’t remember who wrote it, but I was trying to play it the way Rory Block does, with a thumping bass line, making the guitar moan and talk. I can’t match Block’s voice. She’s got too wide a range for me, able to make those low-down groans and then hit those high, wailing shouts. But if I keep in practice, which I try to do, I can damn near imitate her playing. I even bought her instructional tape, because some of her weird tunings and hammerings had me totally frustrated, and I work at it hard.

I have perfect pitch. That and a dollar fifty will get you coffee and a doughnut.

Bury my body down by the highway sign.

No cheerful stuff tonight.

Usually my eyelids give out before my fingers, but I didn’t even try sleep until long after my calluses started to ache. By the time I stretched out on the bed it was almost dawn, and visions of that bloody bed kept yanking me back from the edge of unconsciousness. The alarm clock buzzed way before I was ready for it.

I’d set the alarm for Friday morning volleyball, forgetting that the tournament schedule had effectively canceled it. By the time I quit functioning on automatic pilot, I was at the Central Square Y, feeling fuzzy and disoriented. There weren’t enough players for a pickup game, so I ran the track and tacked an extra twenty pool laps to my regular twenty. The pictures in my mind were still ugly. I kept seeing the crucifix on the wall over the stained cot, wondering if it was the last thing Manuela had seen, wondering if it had been any comfort to her.

I dressed and went across the street to Dunkin’ Donuts, weaving to avoid the Mass. Ave. traffic, ordered coffee and two honey-dipped as usual, sat at the orange Formica counter, and reviewed Mooney’s moves of the night before.

Letter-perfect. Except for letting me stick around.

He’d talked to every tenant in the building. He’d rousted the owner out of bed as soon as he found out where the rent checks were sent. There was no superintendent in the building. Three buildings, all owned by the same company, shared a super who lived in the basement at 23 Westland. Mr. Perez had been summoned and questioned. He’d rented the basement flat five months ago to a woman named Aurelia Gaitan. She’d paid two months in advance, two months’ deposit, and that was the last he’d seen of her. Must have sent in her rent checks or he’d have heard about that, all right. Mr. Canfield, the landlord, didn’t put up with any deadbeats, no way, no how. Hispanic lady, yeah. Short, dark. That was all he recalled. Legal, illegal, he didn’t know and he didn’t care. People had to live someplace, and thank God he’d had somewhere to live before he’d finally gotten his green card, and he was going to be a citizen in maybe three years, and then the police wouldn’t wake him in the middle of the night, no, by the Holy Mother, they wouldn’t. He’d have some rights then.

And no, he didn’t have any idea that more than one woman might have lived in the basement. All these cots, somebody must have moved them in at night while he was sleeping. He had to sleep sometime, didn’t he? It was a free country, wasn’t it?

He was a short, swarthy, barrel-chested man with a lot of bravado and a bald head. I could tell some of the cops liked Perez as a suspect on the spot. He had an accent and he smelled of liquor and tobacco. But Mooney hadn’t been able to shake him, and there was no way to say if he was lying or telling the truth about the woman named Aurelia Gaitan, whether she was my Manuela or not. They had the green card sent over from headquarters, but the super just shrugged when he saw it, saying he sure couldn’t tell from a photo the size of a postage stamp whether the two women were the same and what the hell was all the fuss, anyway, and maybe if he were a citizen, he’d call a lawyer or something.

The landlord, Harold Canfield, showed up in a chocolate Mercedes with a lawyer in tow. Aside from the fancy car and the legal help, he didn’t fit my image of a landlord. Tall and skinny, with darting eyes and too-short sleeves on his brown suit, he looked like a man who never ate a decent meal. Too much nervous energy for that; he’d just grab a bite standing at the counter the way I sometimes do.

His voice was surprisingly deep and calm. He used it to say that he hadn’t a clue as to who was leasing his apartments. All he cared about was getting the rent on time. It was odd, maybe, that the Gaitan woman sent cash in an envelope instead of a check like most of the other tenants, but cash was still legal, wasn’t it? And you know how some of these foreigners are, don’t hold with banks.

None of the tenants except Lawrence Barnaby admitted seeing anybody associated with the basement flat, and he only said he saw a “Spanish girl” in the hall occasionally. He hadn’t even exchanged hellos with her. Maybe he’d seen more than one woman, he wasn’t sure. He hadn’t paid much attention. Nobody knew anything about the basement flat. Nobody had any idea how many people lived there. Urban isolation.

The index fingerprint on Manuela’s green card ought to be some help. The crime lab might be able to tell if she’d been in the apartment.

Of course, there was no finger to match the print to.

I shuddered and spilled a little coffee, wiped it up with a paper napkin.

Scrubbing at the stupid counter top, I realized I wasn’t shuddering at the handlessness of the corpse. I’ve seen worse things than that. You don’t stay a cop for six years in Boston without viewing some sights you’d rather not see. What was giving me the shakes was the suspicion, deeply buried in my mind, that I’d pointed the killer at Manuela.

I kept remembering that car, the white Dodge Aries, following me. I’d been so sure it was an INS car, I hadn’t even tried to get the plate number. And I’d been so open in my questioning, talking to lawyers, asking for Manuela at the sanctuary church, at the Cambridge Legal Collective.

What if somebody at one of those places had known Manuela, realized I was on her trail, and eliminated her before I could find her? Poor Manuela. Or Aurelia. Or whatever her name really was. The dead woman. The corpse. La mujer muerta.

Or worse, what if I’d been home when the phone rang? I know you will help me.

I swallowed my last doughnut without tasting it and headed for the car.