All in One Piece (14 page)

There’s no invitation so far from Vogler or his wife to the North Shore. A young woman Corsair employee came for the “bait”
computers within an hour of my talk with Leonard Vogler, so the firm has now known for days that the hard drives were already
yanked. I at least hope to seem harmless though well intentioned. If I’m forced to call Corsair again next week about the
memorial service, I’ll need a new strategy. Mustn’t sound overeager.

“Listen up, people.” We listen. The instructor is the walrus-mustached Vic whose jacket rains fringe. “Folks, believe it,
your bike is not a toy.”

We believe. To walk a motorcycle in a figure-eight pattern is to learn its heavy, clumsy, dead weight. I’m between a bald
guy in ballistic nylon and a slender child-woman who speaks broken English. Stark is stationed by the storage shed at the
edge of the parking lot. He’s an assistant, which proves he has some human association and is not a total loner.

“Your transmission’s now in gear? Which gear?”

“Neutral!” This from the bald guy who plans to tour the Rockies with his bride in the rear seat and Miles Davis in their headsets.
His jumpsuit is emblazoned “Just wing it.”

“Prepare to mount… mount!”

Legs up and over, we straddle. My feet feel encased in cement.

“All riders ready?”

We nod yes. My bike’s gas tank, I notice, is dented, meaning that it has fallen over or been “dropped,” or as Stark says,
kissed the asphalt. We’re instructed to ride in a big circle around the vast parking lot of a community college. “You’re gonna
look
through
the turns.”

We lip-synch, “
Through
the turns.” I do my Zen stare through the helmet face mask. We’re all bobble heads today. The bikes growl to life, and we
ease out into a wide circle, motorized.

Vroom
. Three times around, and we throttle to 5 mph, which feels somewhere between Evel Knievel and the Wild Bunch.

On the ninth or tenth round, however, my bike somehow orbits wide and veers from the group. It feels programmed, actually
beelining by itself toward an asphalt curb that looks over a foot high… higher.

Message to self: get turned, woman, or hit that curb. I grab the brake… too late. I crash, pinned by the handlebars and
foot pedals. It hurts like hell, but stifle the groan, Reggie. Not one audible
ouch
. A woman has her pride.

“You okay?” At Vic’s signal, all engines stop. The moment is solemn and ridiculous. My leg is jammed under a wheel, and my
feet feel like concrete blocks. “You okay? Anything busted?”

I lift the visor and shake my head as he lifts the bike. Pack me in ice tonight.

The slender child-woman asks, “¿Se fueron los frenos?” Stark shakes his head. “¿Hay huesos quebrados en las piernas?”

To my amazement, Stark lets loose in rapid-fire Spanish, including
botas
and
sin garantías
. Since when is this man bilingual? He needs no phrase book. He speaks the language. This info is worth its weight in gold.
It’s worth a batch of bruises. A Jamaica Plain plan is hatched right here and now.

“You know what you did wrong?” Stark asks a short time later. It’s lunchtime. I’m across from him over meat loaf (his) and
a grilled cheese (mine). We’re in a neo-“authentic” diner with items like “Cuppa Joe” and countermen in turquoise bowling
shirts. “You know your mistake?”

My mistake? Expecting a quarter ounce of sympathy. “Since when do you speak Spanish?”

“You made a classic mistake, actually two mistakes. What were they?”

Getting sucked into a motorcycling course. “I forgot the foot pedal.”

“Right. The bike spun out. What else? Gotta debrief, Cutter. You steered for the curb because you fixated on it.” He smacks
fist into palm. “I’ve seen riders T-bone into trucks, smash into trees—”

“I get the idea.” We chew. “So where did you learn Spanish?”

“Picked it up.”

“In Boston?”

“Maybe Mexico.”

“You lived there?”

“Maybe Cuba.”

“The Marines? Guantánamo?” He doesn’t reply. “You sound fluent.”

His eye gleams with the devil’s own sparkle. “You think I’m just a dog-sitter, Cutter? I’m full of surprises.”

I don’t doubt it for a minute. “I need your help, Stark. I want to track down the boy Steven Damelin mentored. He’s known
to be violent. A friend of Steven’s thinks he killed him.”

“So motorcycles don’t drive murder off your mind?”

“His name’s Luis Diaz. A minister gave me his family address, but nobody named Diaz lives there. Nobody would talk to me.
I took a phrase book. It’s phonetic.”

His laugh booms over the jukebox doo-wop. “Where was this little side trip of yours, Cutter?”

“Jamaica Plain.”

“Then the kid’s probably Puerto Rican or Dominican.”

“How do you know?”

“Because Salvadorans and Mexicans like East Boston.”

“But you’ll go back there with me?”

“Your U.N. translator? I’ll consider it.”

“It has to be yes.”

His gaze narrows. “Eat up, Cutter, you got a big afternoon.” He stops my protest. “Okay, here’s the deal: you pass the biker
course, and I’ll help track down Luis Diaz.”

Late Monday afternoon, I’m back to Mozart Street, Stark at my side. Still no call from Vogler. It’s cloudy, 4:35 p.m., and
icy, thick raindrops suddenly begin to fall from a lead-gray sky, a low pressure system from a sputtering hurricane far out
at sea. The Lava lamp is in a bag under my left arm as we climb the front porch and go down the central hall to the same curtained
doorway on the left. Salsa music plays somewhere on a radio in the building. I’m still sore, but I somehow passed Biker 101
with a D minus. This time it’s Stark who calls out, “Hola,” and here comes the woman in flamingo, though today it’s hot orange.
Seeing me, she halts and blinks, her face tighter. Stark, however, launches in with a little bow—“Buenas tardes, señora. ¿Cómo
estás?” He keeps up a line of patter, and she begins to nod and murmur, then says a few words as he goes on, raising his voice
because it’s now raining hard. “Soy de Boston,” he says. “¿De dónde eres?”

“Miraflores.”

“Ah, Miraflores. Tropical… la naranja, la mimosa.”

Even I can pick up
mimosa
and
orange,
but she crosses both arms over her bosom as if he’s invoked heaven itself. Stark introduces us by name, and he translates
so I learn that she is Carmine from the village of Miraflores in the Dominican Republic. Just when it seems as though he’ll
never get to the point, Stark finally says, “Estoy buscando la familia de Luis Díaz.”

At Luis’s name, she tenses and gazes down at the floorboards. Looking up, her eyes are filmed with fear. Is this about a school
problem? she asks Stark. Is Luis in trouble again?

“¿La escuela? No.”

“Ask her about his school, Stark. Ask whether he has Chinese friends.” He gives me the “are you nuts look?” “It’s about my
door, the marks.”

“¿Amigos chinos?” Maybe he does, but she’s not really sure. In America, kids come from everywhere. Her son is on his own a
lot. She doesn’t know who his friends are. Carmine widens her stance as if to brace herself to ask, “¿La policía?”

“No, no.” Stark smiles and points at the bag. “Tenemos el regalo para Luis.”

A gift? He takes the bag and shows the Lava lamp. The gift changes everything. Carmine’s relief is palpable. But Luis, she
tells us, is sleeping. He doesn’t feel well. He cannot be disturbed. Perhaps we could come another day.

Stark enters into a complex negotiation that seems to go nowhere. The rain is pouring in icy bucketloads. In moments, we’ll
dash through it to the Beetle. Just now, however, somebody thuds onto the porch and stomps down the hall toward us. He’s big,
his footsteps thunderous, his body soft yet muscular and bulked. He’s in cargo pants and carries a basketball. He drips from
head to toe, and water pools at his enormous feet. “Mamá, esta lloviendo!”

It’s Luis.

Carmine looks mortified, but Stark grabs Luis’s hand and pumps it man to man. Or mano a mano. It saves the moment, though
Carmine doesn’t know what to do. She faces the boy as if to air-dry him with plumes and jets of Spanish. I suggest we all
go inside. Stark makes the request to Señora Carmine. With great reluctance, she parts the doorway curtain. We’re in.

The kitchen is spotless, the dinette table centerpiece a casserole dish set on a lacquered wood tray. We sit down. The fridge
is covered with shapshots of smiling babies, children, family groupings against a background of banana trees. One pantry door,
however, is splintered, and the wall by the stove is punched, through the paint and plaster. The hole is the size of a fist.

Luis’s sneakers squish on the linoleum, and Carmine wraps the boy in a beach towel. His wet, curly dark hair frames a broad-featured
face with heavy-lidded dark eyes, a wide nose, and mouth with full lips parted just enough to reveal the space between his
two front teeth. His hands, as Matt Kitchel said, are huge, and the nails of his right thumb and index finger almost black.
From trauma? From a death struggle with Steven? Could it be?

I say, “Luis, we’re here to give you a gift.” He squints but says nothing. “We have something from your Big Buddy, Steven.”

“Steven? From Steven?” He breaks into torrential Spanish, his voice cracking. I hear
muerto
and
policía
. Carmine strokes his arm.

“We’re not the police,” I say. “This is from Steven’s apartment. He wanted you to have this gift. It’s a lamp.”

“And the
película
… the movie?”

“What movie?”

“The video?” His eyes are wide, eager.

“I don’t know anything about that.” His gaze shifts. He’s no longer interested. “I don’t know about a movie. Here’s what I
brought.” I take the lamp from the bag and put it before him to gauge his reaction.

There is no reaction. “Do you remember this lamp in Steven’s apartment?” A shrug could pass for yes. “You visited his apartment,
right?”

He mumbles, “Couple times.” Carmine hastens to tell Stark that Steven’s death has greatly saddened Luis. She pauses while
he translates. The police came and asked questions, and this upset him very much. She speaks as though her son isn’t present.

“Let’s plug in the lamp to make sure it works,” I say. Carmine rummages for an extension cord. Voilà, the deep glow of cobalt
blue. I try to buy time. “Let’s wait for the bubbles.”

Stark asks Luis about baseball, then
fútbol
. I notice a kitchen door panel that’s shattered. Kicked out? The kitchen so neat, why the damage? From Luis on the rampage?
He says he likes American
fútbol,
likes the NFL. A metal tray table by the stove is dented as though it was toppled. Or thrown?

“Oooh.” The lava bubbles up. We all watch it, and Carmine prompts her son to say
gracias
to Señorita Cutter and Señor Stark. But Carmine sees me steal a glance at the dented tray table and punched plaster. Clasping
her son’s arm, she speaks insistently, breathlessly, to Stark. Luis is a good boy, she says. He has a hard time in Jamaica
Plain, the cold winters… and is homesick for his grandparents and cousins. In Miraflores, people help out. It’s different
here, she says, you’re on your own.

Stark nods and translates fast while Luis sits like a toweled Buddha. Carmine leaves the apartment at 5:30 in the morning,
she says, and Luis gets himself off to school, summer school too. She cleans hotel rooms and wants a better life for him.
There was a hurricane in Miraflores, and her parents feel too old for a teenage boy. TV…
americano
TV is full of monsters that turn boys into
brutos
. Luis has high spirits, she says, like his Uncle Tomas. The police don’t understand high spirits. Yes, sometimes Luis is
angry. A boy in a new country, it’s not easy. Sometimes he forgets himself. But see how Luis helps out. He’s learning to cook.
Yesterday he prepared
pollo loco
and sun rice. Maybe he’ll be a chef.

The object of all this attention, meanwhile, sits as if waiting for the aliens to go. The rain has lessened. The Lava lamp
bubbles on. Carmine has testified on her son’s behalf, and now she rises, our signal to leave. As we stand, she points to
the centerpiece tray, picks it up, and shows the finish, the handles.
La bandeja,
she says, was Luis’s gift to her on Mother’s Day, a good American holiday. Her son made it himself in woodworking.

“Wood shop?”

“Sí.” Very good with his hands. Good with tools. Steven helped with this.

“Helped how? Stark, ask her how.”

With care for the tools. “Tener respeto.”

“What tools? Stark, ask about the tools.”

But we’re at the curtain, then ushered outside to the porch. Luis is sports crazy like all boys, Carmine says, but later he
will use his good hands for a good future. Perhaps Luis will be a
carpintero
because the tools fit his hand like gloves.

Y
ou like barbecue?” Detective Frank Devaney holds a take-out bag as he reaches to open his car door to let me in. “Sandwiches
and slaw for two. Get in. Let’s eat.”

It’s Wednesday, just past noon. Moments ago, my cell rang and Devaney asked my whereabouts, which was Boylston Street. “Meet
me on Columbus by the Park Plaza, Reggie.” I hustle over there, and within minutes, he pulls in behind a taxi parked curbside
at the hotel. He’s brought an autumn drive-in picnic. “No cup holders. Here’s RC. You drink RC?”

I do. He unbuttons his houndstooth jacket, spreads a napkin between us, aligns plastic forks just so as if setting the table,
and opens the foil wrappers. I’m eyeing the police radio gear in the dashboard. There’s a portable blue light on the floor.
If Devaney is called for a high-speed chase, do I ride along? Why has he phoned me? Maybe it’s about the Chinese markings.

“Here, extra sauce.” He puts the salt and pepper packets in place, uncaps the slaw, and disposes of the tops. He points to
my sandwich. “At my house, nobody will eat barbecue. There’s a course on pork and beef ribs next month, and the teacher’s
a Memphis chef. But I can’t take it. My wife saw the sauce mop once. It reminded her of a dirty floor. Here—more napkins.
It’s
picante
.” I bite in. He says, “¿Está demasiado picante?”