Now You See Her (22 page)

He bites his lip. “The Newton woman is connected to the black guy in prison for murder?”

“Not the way you think. In fact, they’re actually separate.” His eyes narrow, and dark clouds gather across his brow. He’ll
stay right here until he gets an explanation, knowing Stark. “I’m trying to help a certain detective. He’s swamped right now.
I’m saving him some time.”

“With evidence on your kitchen table? This saves time?”

“In a way, yes, it does.”

“The cop knows what you’re up to?”

“We have an understanding.”

“That’s not what I asked, Cutter.”

“Maybe it’s not your business, Stark. Anyway, I don’t need a chaperone. But for what it’s worth, I’m on my own on this.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

His mug slams down on the countertop. It startles Biscuit, but Stark ignores her. His knuckles are white as foam. “You’re
dancing with the devil, Cutter. You’re scaring me.”

I don’t answer. Stark reaches for the dog, who bays like a primal hound. I try to laugh, but it catches in my throat.

It’s Wednesday morning and still hot. In a twill skirt and checked yellow shirt, I set out on foot for the Eldridge neighborhood,
following a wretched sleepless night and the dawn’s dead-end effort at “Ticked Off.” The items from Sylvia Dempsey’s purses
are put away in a shoe box. My rib’s hot pulsing started up again at sunrise, a prod to action. You might say my rib is my
conscience. This morning I’ll pound on strangers’ doors. Devaney would call it legwork, but he knows nothing about my morning’s
whereabouts.

Forster Street, which Suitcase Mary named as her former home, is the first side street off Eldridge, the street where sparks
and cinders flew through the night sky when the Eldridge houses and the chop shop burned. One block over is Remmer Street,
then Sorrington and Werfair, mostly all dilapidated triple-deckers. I want to find out about the properties bought and sold
to make way for Eldridge II. I want to know whether conditions are ripe for an arson repeat.

First house is a grimy white clapboard on Forster with a riotous blooming lilac bush in the front yard. Nobody answers the
bell. A half dozen yellowed rolled newspapers lie on the porch in sodden lumps, and the house has an empty feeling. Next I
knock at a pale gray house with bashed-in aluminum siding. A woman with heavy eyes and teeth like pegs answers and lets out
a verbal barrage, which may be Estonian or Kazakh. She gestures with wide sweeps of her arms, but I can’t pick up a word.

Across the street, a man in ruby pants and hair like dust tells me that whatever I’m selling, he won’t buy it. “Magazines,
right? Forget it.”

“No, not magazines.”

“Whatever. You’re in the wrong neighborhood. People are moving out.”

“That’s what I’d like to talk about.”

“Evacuation. We’re all refugees. It’s an outrage.” The door slams shut. I peck on the window glass, but it’s futile. If only
Biscuit were here with me, my goodwill ambassador. As a social lubricant, she rivals a cooing baby in a carriage.

Three more houses on Forster, and nobody answers. It’s a workday, so it might be smarter to make these rounds in the evening
hours. I’m on the next block on Remmer Street when a young woman in a calico skirt with a backpack descends an outside stair
and heads toward a Corolla with an Illinois plate. “Miss, may I ask you a question?”

Her expression of midwestern openness reminds me of my years in Chicago. “Sure thing.”

“I’m interested in an apartment around here. But I hear people are moving.”

“Yeah, it’s a shame. They call us tenants at will. Nobody has a lease anymore.”

“Why is that?”

“Somebody’s been buying the houses. My own landlord sure sold out fast.”

“Maybe he got a price he couldn’t refuse?”

“Gee, I don’t know. He didn’t seem happy. I think it’s more like take-the-money-and-run. He moved to the South Shore. They
say a big development is coming.”

“Is the development company buying the houses? Is it the Bevington Partners Group?”

“I don’t know. I’m a grad student. I’m moving myself next month. You might talk to this guy who lives on Sorrington—no, on
Werfair. Yeah, on Werfair Street, two blocks over. His name’s Danny something. He tried to organize a neighborhood association.”

“Friends of Eldridge?”

“That’s it. He’s kind of an activist. I think he’s a grad student too.” She leans to unlock her car door. “One good thing
about everybody leaving: it’s easy to get a parking place. Well, good luck.”

The third house on the left on Werfair is supposedly Danny Conaway’s apartment, according to a woman outside in a flowered
robe and slippers whistling for her cat, Peaches. “Peaches! Peaches, come here, kitty kitty! Here, boy!”

There’s no sign of tomcat Peaches when the door is opened by a straw-haired, freckled young man in khakis and a plaid shirt
desperate for the pass of an iron. He’s in his late twenties, barefoot, and looks as though the doorbell woke him up. It’s
now almost noon. “Danny Conaway?” He nods, rubs his eyes. “I’m Reggie Cutter. I understand you’re the head of the Friends
of Eldridge.”

He yawns. “Friends, yeah. You’re too late. It’s disbanded.”

“Were you the president?”

“No. I hate hierarchy. I’m no hegemon.”

“But you were the group leader? Organizer?”

His laugh is dry. “I got up the petitions and called meetings. I went door-to-door and facilitated. Yeah, I put in some time.”
He scratches a stubbly cheek. “You looking for somebody in particular?”

“I’m scouting an apartment for my daughter. I hear you’re the man to see.”

He scowls. “Lady, tell your daughter to look someplace else. The wrecking ball’s due any day in this neighborhood. It’s our
own local Big Dig.”

“I don’t understand.”

“This neighborhood is sold out from under. Kiss it good-bye. Tell your daughter.”

“These houses are scheduled for demolition?”

“You got it.”

“By whom? The city? The state? Is it eminent domain?”

A bitter laugh breaks as he shakes his head. “It’s eminent domain, all right. Eminent big money, another crib for rich people.
Forget civic action. Forget workers, students, Russian immigrants. We’re history. We learned something: the grass roots die
when vultures want to eat your liver. Why do you ask? You a civics teacher?”

“I’m a voting citizen. What’s going on?”

“They bought off the zoning board and sent undercover errand boys to steal the properties.”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“Big money. Kleptos. Oligarchs.”

“But who?” He shrugs. “And everyone simply sold?”

“They’re slick. They sent flacks to front for them. Flacks with checkbooks.”

“Agents? Surrogates?”

“Totally. I lived here three years before I caught on. First was this guy from Southie, Irish like me, claimed he was a roofer
and doing real well. He bought half a dozen houses. Good cash offers, every one. Then comes a Portuguese fella from Rhode
Island, says he’s got a big extended family from the Azores and they all want to live in the same neighborhood. Before you
know it, he’s bought nearly every house on Sorrington. Cash up front. But the Azores people never showed up. We were neutron-bombed
but didn’t know it. The media wasn’t interested. They’re in their pod.”

“It’s hard to believe that every owner was so willing to sell. How many houses on these three streets, about forty?”

“Yeah. There were incentives.”

“High offers?”

His laugh is high, bitter. “There’s a homeless woman around here who raves about live coals and cinders.”

“Suitcase Mary.”

“That’s her. Some of the old-timers remember a fire before the first Eldridge Place went up. Word got around it could happen
here—would happen. Big guys showed up with Dobermans and walked up and down at odd hours. A neighborhood guy got mauled. Then
a woman on Remmer Street refused to sell. She got killed in a weird accident.”

“A car wreck?”

“No, a live power line. She was electrocuted. There was no storm, just the live wire down in front of her house. Nobody knows
how or why she touched it. Her daughter sold the house right away. All the holdouts knuckled under fast and took the cash.”

“The whole neighborhood was terrorized?”

He looks left and right down the block and lowers his voice. “Nobody said sabotage or death threats, not in so many words.
We couldn’t pin it down. And hey, I can’t get into hearsay. Cross a line, it’s a legal mess. We tried to get owners to come
forward, go on the record, see a lawyer. Nobody would talk, not even the guy attacked by the Dobermans. Maybe because we’re
students. Grad students, but students.”

“Let me ask about the new buyers. Was one of them named Perk?”

“Perk?” He shakes his head. “No.”

“How about Carlo?”

“Carlo? I don’t think so.”

“The one who claimed to be Portuguese? Did he quote lines from Dante’s Inferno?”

“No. I’d remember.”

“Was there also an Asian man making offers and buying the houses?”

“The Chinese guy, yeah. He showed up right after the Irish and Portuguese. He smiled a lot and tried to sell us cars.”

“Steve, Steve Yung.”

“That’s him. How’d you know? How come you’re so interested?” He cocks an eyebrow. “That stuff about your daughter, it’s fake,
right?”

“Let’s say I’m looking into a situation.”

He pulls a shirt button. “Look, it’s none of my business, but whatever you’re thinking, this fight’s lost. The neighborhood
is finished. But mainly, these guys don’t fool around. They have money and tactics. That downed live wire was enough for us.
Go up against them, it’s not worth it. Try to buck them, one morning they have a live wire ready for you.”

I ache to call Devaney but refrain. We haven’t spoken since the Iron Chef dustup. If I tell him about the door-to-door search,
he’ll reproach me for amateur adventuring, then promise to “pass along” my information. He’ll shove a scribbled note into
a pile of papers while the Homicide Division works round the clock on the Dempsey case. No, I won’t call, not yet. Instead,
I wash up a few dishes, straighten the kitchen, and do my morning free-weight workout and sets for the thighs and calves.

If I’m correct, Steve Yung is Jeffrey Arnot’s man, and so were the Irish roofer and the Portuguese too. This makes Arnot’s
role in the Bevington Partners Group clear: it’s land procurement. Whatever the cost of “persuasion,” Arnot gets title to
properties even if it takes ethnic front men, Dobermans, and a lethal high-voltage wire—or an arsonist’s torch thirteen years
ago. The houses that Yung and the others bought were doubtless sold immediately to dummy shell companies. No wonder Danny
Conaway’s Friends of Eldridge couldn’t track them down. Ownership lines blur through leasing arrangements, as I well know
from Marty’s business mantra on outsourcing and externalizing costs and special partnerships. The Bevington Partners Group
wouldn’t necessarily hold title to the land. No blood on its books.

Did such deals turn Jeffrey Arnot into a high-profile Boston businessman? Did they vault him from women’s wrestling and nightclubs
to Bevington Partners Group? At what point did death become one cost of doing business. Was it the arson and the accidental
death of squatters on Eldridge Street?

If Arnot had ordered B&B Auto and the Eldridge houses torched, was it Carlo who did the dirty work? Why else would the B&B
worker turn up as the Eldridge Place night manager? He was probably rewarded for the firestorm of his own making. Big Doc’s
rant about Carlo and “flames of hell” makes sense in a new way. The incineration of Eldridge Street is the real inferno.

But how does this tie in with Peter Wald’s murder? The fatal shooting and the fire occurred the same day. Big Doc remembers
young Wald; he called him a “pale wanderer” and “child of death.” And he acknowledged that Faiser lived in the cult house.
What’s more, the Tsakis brothers remember Henry hawking jewelry and shoes at B&B Auto, so the young man had access there.
The chop shop workers knew him on sight. Does Carlo know anything about the murder? Or Perk?

It’s a struggle to calm down long enough for household tasks, making a bed, tossing in a load of laundry. Every minute is
a mental strategy session. My thoughts stampede—Henry Faiser, Jeffrey Arnot, Carlo Feggiotti.

I need Detective Frank Devaney. I do. But he’s off-limits until the Dempsey furor dies down. On that front, I have a plan.
In ten minutes, I’m expecting my neighbor, Trudy Pfaeltz, whose day off from the hospital is crammed with sales pitches for
Cutco knives, her newest side business. She wants an hour with me, and I’ve agreed, mostly to ask this veteran nurse about
artificial skin. I’ll buy a kitchen knife if I must.

Trudy will make sure I do. She enters the front door like a weather front in cross trainers. I barely have a minute’s breezy
chat about her parakeet’s vocabulary with the new talking-bird seed diet. “The jury’s out, Reggie. Kingpin still says ‘pretty
bird,’ but it’s weird, his feathers are turning orange. He’s healthy but looks like a feathered carrot. Imagine the marketing
potential of orange parakeets shipped online. I’m testing ten young birds now, but my kitchen’s small. I don’t suppose you’d—”

“Raise test parakeets? I’m afraid not, Trudy.”

“Then let’s get to Cutco. This is a wonderful product.” We sit across the table, and Trudy sets down her bundle of cutlery
wrapped in red felt and begins to unroll it. “Home sales cuts the middlemen, so the cost benefit is to you, the customer.
This is a 440A chrome-molybdenum steel blade, least likely to rust or corrode. It holds a chef-standard edge.”

“How much?”

“We’ll get to that. As a nurse, I know what ‘surgical steel’ means. These knives are surgical steel for the home.” She shows
how a serrated knife cuts a piece of leather. “Imagine that this is the toughest steak.” In moments, she snips a penny in
half with the demo scissors. I marvel.

“Trudy, sales are your calling in life.”

She gives me a frank stare. “Believe me, it’s refreshing to talk to healthy people after what I see every night in the ICU,
the oncology floor, the burn unit—”