The Staked Goat - Jeremiah Healy (4 page)

The same kid was on duty. When he saw me coming, he
turned to look at the message box.

"I'm sorry, sir, but Mr. Sachs hasn't come
back." I asked the kid to ring Al's room again. No answer. I
went to one of the pay phones and called my home number. I took the
remote unit for my telephone tape macl1ine from my jacket pocket and
waited for my taped outgoing message to start at the other end. When
I heard my own voice, I beeped the device once into the speaker of
the phone and heard my machine rewind and play back. No messages. I
beeped again to reset the machine and hung up.

I walked back to the kid and asked if he had a
newspaper I could borrow. He handed me an evening Globe, which I read
cover to cover while seated in an overly upholstered lobby chair. At
10:15, I got up and returned it to him.

"May I have your pad again, please?"

"Certainly."

I had been composing my message mentally for twenty
minutes. "I trust your deal was big enough to justify crushing
the spirit of your dearest friend." I signed it, "Your
loyal servant, J. F. Cuddy, P.O.," for "pissed off." I
wrote "10: 15 P.M.” under that, folded it, and asked the clerk
to substitute it for the message in Al's box.

The clerk said he was sorry. I left the Midtown,
gathered my car, drove home, and hit the sack. I didn't bother
setting the alarm.

FOUR
-•-

I WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING WITHOUT A HANGOVER. It was
light outside, and the clock said 9:20. I rolled over, realized I was
slept out, and decided to jog the river. I clicked on the all-news
radio station to see how many layers of warmth I would need. ".
. . Maxwell canning the winning shot with twelve seconds left in
regulation. Over to you, Marcie."

"Thank you, Tom. And repeating this morning's
top stories, President Reagan warns the Soviets that arms limitation
now depends on them, and the nude, mutilated body of an unidentified
man is found on Beacon Hill."

She continued on about staying tuned for Greg
Somebody and the weather, but I wasu't listening anymore. There was a
little lump at the back of my throat and a tug in my stomach. No good
reason to think the man was Al, despite the proximity of the body.
The statistics were far the other way. But Al was Al, and Al always
showed.

Short-circuiting an hour
of internal argument, I picked up the telephone and dialed the Boston
police.

* * *

Two fifteen-inch sphinxes crouch at the head of the
staircase in that Boston City Hospital building. Down the stairs is a
tomb of sorts, but not the grand, permanent kind their giant cousins
guard in Egypt. No Pharaohs here, only transients.

We went down the stairs. A set of bright-red double
doors led to an anteroom. A white-coated clerk behind a desk nodded
to my companion, then returned to entering information from a
clipboard onto file cards.

The anteroom was chilly, osmosis from the year-round
frigidity of the next room beyond a second set of double doors. The
wall tiles were a sickly, pastel green, the floor easily swabbed,
single-sheet linoleum. I sat in a molded plastic chair. There was a
fluorescent light blinking above me and a young homicide detective
blinking across from me. His name was Daley, blue-eyed and
sandy-haired. My watch said 11:30 A.M., and the eighteen or so hours
he had been away from his bed were taking their toll.

We were waiting for Lieutenant Robert J. Murphy, who
was in charge, to drive in from his home. I already had asked if I
could see the body just for identification purposes, but Daley had
said Murphy had left strict orders no one was to see the body without
Murphy himself being present. So we waited.

For distraction's sake, I tried to remember why
Murphy's name stuck in my mind. It was common enough and I had never
met him, yet. . .

The swinging double doors boomed open and a heavyset
black man blew through them. He had maybe ten years on me, I maybe
two inches on him.

"C'mon," he said to the morgue attendant
and the two of us as we rose from our chairs.

"Lieutenant Murphy," said Daley to me as we
trailed behind.

The body room itself was twenty degrees colder and
snow-blind white. The walls were honeycombed with eighty or ninety
slightly oversized file cabinet fronts.

The attendant checked his clipboard, then approached
one of the fronts. Shaking his head, he
moved
to the next and gripped the handle. He yanked down and out, stepping
aside as the slab on its casters snicked smoothly outward at chest
level.

I stifled an urge to grab for the drawer before it
slid completely out of the wall and spilled its contents at our feet.
An unseen brake, however, stopped it abruptly, the whole device
vibrating with a soft metallic hum in the otherwise silent room.

Murphy and the attendant were on one side, Daley and
I on the other. It was as though a headwaiter had led us to our table
and no one wanted to be the first to sit.

Murphy spoke. "Pull the sheet to his knees."

The attendant, with a too-often-practiced flourish,
whipped the cover down. My eyes didn't quite focus, then they did and
my head involuntarily jerked up and away. I realized I had been
holding my breath, so I exhaled and forced my eyes downward again.

It was Al. Almost. He had less hair than I
remembered, and more stomach, but those weren't the major changes.
Whoever had done him had used a cigarette to burn his upper torso.
There were burns showing also on his genitals, which had been slashed
I repeatedly, probably by a straight razor. The burns continued on
his throat, lips, ears, and eyes. The eyelids had been burned away
almost completely. I looked at his right hand. It seemed untouched. I
cou1dn't see his left hand from where I was standing.

"Recognize him?" grunted Murphy.

I glanced up at him and came around the slab.

"Yeah," I said, bumping rudely into him,
"just barely."

The attendant backed away and Daley from behind
clamped firmly on both my arms. I swung my head around as if to glare
at Daley too, but I was mainly interested in A1's left hand. I caught
an unmistakable frame of his left pinky finger. It was bent nearly 90
degrees toward the rest of the hand.

I looked back at Murphy. He wore a grim smile.

"Let's go," he said. Murphy wheeled and
left the room. Daley released his grip, and we followed. I took an
involuntary extra step as the slab slammed shut into the wall behind
us. As we walked, I thought very carefully about how to handle
Murphy.

When you decide not to tell the whole truth, it is
far better to tell nearly the whole truth. It's easy to get tripped
up in a series of lies, because sooner or later the interrogator will
uncover one of them. So if you have something to hide, simply omit
it, and otherwise tell the truth. I remembered that from MCP
interrogation training.

I also remembered why Murphy's name meant something
to me. Some years ago, the word was that a city councilor had vowed
never to see a black reach the grade of detective lieutenant. Oh, it
was all right to have them in uniform, and strut them on appropriate
holidays in the poorer, blacker neighborhoods. But a plain-clothes
lieutenant, especially in homicide, never. Well, it seemed that some
liberals had enough pull to get Robert J. Murphy's name on the
lieutenant's list and to get it, because of the Irish last name, past
the councilman's informal, backroom veto. At the promotion ceremony,
said councilman hit the roof. He later saw to it that said Mmphy was
assigned to Beacon Hill, residential area of many liberals and rich
folks, where said Murphy could fuck up royally in front of those who
thought they knew more than the councilman. As it turned out,
however, said Murphy knew his stuff, and said councilman was
eventually defeated for reelection for a hundred other reasons.

Said Murphy now sat across from me, or, more
accurately, I sat across his desk from him. A female detective named
Cross had replaced the exhausted young Daley. Murphy didn't look
exhausted, maybe because of his environment. His office was a degree
or two colder than the morgue had been.

I repeated for Cross the background information of
how I came to know A1 Sachs, his phone call to me, and my futile
visit to his hotel.

"You realize, Cuddy," said Murphy, "that
this has all the characteristics of a gay killing, either a ritual or
a psycho." It was not a question.

"I haven't seen Al for years," I replied,
"but I am certain he wasn't gay. He had plenty of opportunities
in Saigon, including me, and he never hinted at it."

Murphy sighed. "The medical examiner's
preliminary actual cause of death, despite the mutilations, was
smothering." Murphy flipped open a folder on his desk, scanned
for a second, then read, "Probably a pillow impregnated with a
chemical, tentatively identified as a men's cologne called Aramis."
Murphy closed the folder. "A lot of gay men use Aramis." I
I watched Murphy carefully. No hint of discrimination or distaste.
Just a fact. Many Beacon Hill residents were gay. Murphy probably
grew up in a neighborhood like I had, where a mere allusion toward
homosexuality would cost a kid his teeth. Along the way he had
learned to change, if not an attitude, at least the appearance of an
attitude.

I shook my head. "No, the method of it is just a
cover for something else."

"Like what?" said Murphy, quite reasonably.

"I don't know. I'd had only one call from the
guy in the last year. I have no idea what reason somebody would have
for singling him out."

His phone rang. "Homicide, Lieutenant Murphy
speaking." Good telephone manner, an executive evaluator would
say.

"Be right over. Nobody in or out. You included."

Murphy told Cross to get her coat. As she left the
room, he grabbed his from a worn coat tree of indeterminable wood and
said to me, "Uniforms have secured Sachs' hotel room. You wanna
come?"

I thanked him and fell in
behind him.

* * *

The three of us entered the lobby. A uniformed cop
was flirting with an attractive blond desk clerk who stood in place
of the kid I had dealt with last night.

"Keller," said Murphy, beckoning to the
uniform. Keller trotted over to us.

"Yes, Lieutenant?"

"Which room?" asked Murphy.

"Three-oh-four." Keller gave me a
once-over.

"Mackey's guarding it."

"Come with ns."

"Yessir."

"If you can be spared here," Murphy said.

"Yessir," said Keller. I couldn't tell if
Keller had caught the sarcasm.

After two corridor turns, we reached Room 304.
Another young uniform, a black man with a thin mustache, was standing
four rooms down.

"Mackey," barked Murphy. Mackey trotted to
us. I had the feeling that a lot of people trotted to Murphy.

"What the hell are you doing down the hall?"

"You told us to secure 304, sir. From where I
was, I could watch 304 and maybe someone would approach it, thinking
I was doing something else."

A smile began on Murphy's lips before he banished it.
I figured a small star would go next to Mackey's name in a ledger
book somewhere.

"Fill us in," said Murphy to Mackey. Mackey
stated they'd received the call from Murphy through the dispatcher to
come here, arrived at 12:06 P.M., checked with the desk clerk, had
her open the room. They peered inside, saw nothing striking, then
relocked the door, Mackey remaining at the door, Keller returning to
the desk with the clerk.

"Twelve-oh-six." Murphy turned to Keller.
"Was that before or after the maid came?"

Keller swallowed and reddened. "I don't know."

Mackey interceded. "Lieutenant, the maid for
this corridor saw me by the door. She said she had opened 304, looked
in, and saw it hadn't been slept in, so she moved on."

Murphy nodded. "Cross, you and Keller go back to
that clerk. Find out whether anybody else has been in or out of the
room, and anything else about the room."

"Lieutenant?" I said.

"Yeah?"

"When I was here last night, a college-age boy
was on desk duty. He'd probably started work in the afternoon. That
means someone relieved him before the present clerk came on, unless
clerks work twelve-hour shifts here. Maybe the names and even home
addresses and telephones of all of them would be helpful."

"I would have gotten that information anyway,"
said Cross, a bit defensively.

"Fine," said Murphy. "Check on
rent-a-car, too."

Cross and Keller started off down the hall. "O.K.
," said Murphy, "take your shoes off."

Mackey and I did so. Murphy pointed to the door, and
Mackey keyed the lock and swung the door open. We looked in for maybe
twenty seconds before Murphy led us into the room.

We strolled around, looking here and there without
touching. Murphy took out a pencil and pushed the accordion doors of
the closet open. A battered garment bag hung in there, nothing else.