Back bay, p.41
Back Bay, page 41
part #1 of Peter Fallon Series
“Do me a favor and take him on a little tour of Southie. Then Evangeline and I can get away.”
“That’s real romantic, Peter,” said Sheila.
Danny flipped his keys to his brother. “Anything so my little brother can get laid.”
Evangeline looked the other way as her Porsche sped off. Fallon watched it head back toward the expressway with the Oldsmobile a short distance behind.
“If anybody up at that place is expecting us, they won’t be looking for a brown Chevy.”
Peter and Evangeline swung past the Lynnewood Manor an hour later. A large visitors’ parking lot descended in several tiers down from the main house. The only entrances were through the central building or the service gate, where trucks, doctors’ cars, ambulances, and hearses passed regularly. Fallon did not stop or pull into the lot. He had already decided that he would go in on foot, avoiding the reception area or the guardhouse at the service gate.
“Why don’t we just go in?” asked Evangeline.
“The guy in the black Olds proves they still don’t trust us. They’re probably watching for us at all the main entrances.”
“So what? I don’t see why we can’t just walk right in. I’ll talk to her doctor, or we’ll talk to the people in administration, and we’ll get her out. She’s a responsible adult. They don’t have the right to keep her in there.”
“If she’s still in shock, she isn’t responsible. Who’s the executor of her will?”
“Her daughter Isabelle.”
“Then Isabelle has probably been appointed temporary guardian, and from what I’ve seen, Isabelle is on your uncle’s team.”
Fallon watched a bus stop in front of the nursing home. Six people got off. Two were black, one Puerto Rican, three whites. The women wore white dresses, and none of them looked as though they lived in the neighborhood. They crossed the street and the parking lot and went in a side entrance on the basement level of the main building. The midday shift was arriving for work.
Fallon drove the car around the block and back to a bus stop a mile or so away.
“What are you doing?” asked Evangeline.
“I’m going in alone.”
“We came here to see my grandmother, Peter.”
“If she’s guarded, it’s going to be hard enough for one person to get near her.” He looked Evangeline up and down.
She was wearing an expensive pink blouse, gold neck chain, and Brass Buckle jeans. Fallon had stopped at his apartment for a clean shirt and jeans after borrowing his brother’s car.
“I might be able to get in the workers’ entrance, but you don’t really make it as a member of the proletariat.”
She decided to let him follow his instinct.
Fallon got off the bus in front of the Lynnewood Manor along with three nurses, a Puerto Rican man and a white teen-ager who were complaining to each other about the work load for the kitchen help, and a black man dressed like an orderly. Fallon fell in behind the kitchen workers and put his head down.
“Yeah,” said the teen-ager, a pimply kid with stringy hair and a bad set of adenoids. “They get real pissed when their tea ain’t hot.”
“They bitch at me today, man, I tell ’em the bus is late,” said the Puerto Rican.
“What if Lard-Ass Loughlin bitches?”
“Ah, I tell her to suck me off, man.”
They both laughed.
Fallon decided that if he could get past the entrance, he would follow them to the kitchen. From there, he might have a good chance at Katherine Carrington.
Keeping at the edge of the group, he walked around the side of the main house to the narrow flight of stairs which led to the workers’ entrance. He felt his hands beginning to sweat. He wiped them on his shirt. He hoped he didn’t have to answer any questions at the door, because he could feel his voice tightening in his throat. He walked down the stairs which led to the cellar and stepped into the air conditioning.
A private security guard sat by the time clock. He was reading the racing form, and he did not look up. Fallon thought about slipping past, but he did not know where he was going. He had to stay with the kitchen workers, who continued to complain as they punched in. Fallon took a time card from the rack and pushed it into the clock. The guard raised his head from the paper, but Fallon didn’t miss a beat. He finished punching in, and by the time he put the card back, the guard was again trying to pick the daily double. Fallon realized that the guards weren’t waiting for him.
He turned and walked through a pair of swinging doors which led to a new stairwell. He heard the voices of the kitchen men below him. He followed. At the bottom of the stairs, he stepped into another corridor. He was in a subbasement which had been dug when the house was remodeled. At the end of the corridor were swinging doors that led to the kitchen. Two rooms opened onto the corridor, and Fallon could hear the voices of the kitchen workers coming from the room on the right.
He walked down the corridor and looked into a workers’ coatroom. There were pegs on the wall, benches and folding chairs scattered about the room.
Fallon stepped in and said hello.
The pair eyed him suspiciously at first, thinking he was another boss. Then Fallon took a white coat off one of the hooks and put it on.
“You new here, man?” asked the Puerto Rican.
“Yeah. My first day.”
“You a cook?”
Fallon shook his head. “Loughlin hired me. She said I should start deliverin’ food on the noon shift.”
The two workers looked at each other.
“You takin’ one of our jobs?” asked the teen-ager.
Fallon said he didn’t think so and wondered whether the kid would sound any better if he blew his nose.
“She musta found more shit for us to do, then,” said the Puerto Rican.
Fallon introduced himself and learned their names. “Mr. Sanchez. You must be the Sanchez that Loughlin told me to see.”
The Puerto Rican laughed. “I didn’t know that bitch trust me with anything.”
Fallon thought he might be going too far. “We don’t have to check in with her once we’ve punched in, do we?”
“Nope. Just deliver the food, then bring the trays back. She find something for you to do then.”
Sanchez led Fallon down the hallway. They stepped through the swinging doors into the steam and confusion of the central kitchen. Workers scurried about. Cooks shouted orders. Dishwashers churned away. Institution green and stainless-steel silver were the only colors that cut through the steam. On the far side of the room, behind a glass partition, Fallon saw an overweight blonde shouting into a telephone. He assumed that she was Loughlin.
“Where are the trays?” Fallon wanted to be out of the kitchen before Loughlin was out of her office.
“Take it easy, man. You don’t want to move too fast on your first day. You’ll wear yourself out,” said Sanchez.
“Yeah,” added the kid. “Watch us.”
They crossed to the corner where the carts were loaded for delivering. Fallon read the notation on the first cart. It listed bungalows one to twelve, the name of each patient, and the meal. There were four carts. Fallon moved to the next and read. “Carrington, number sixteen.”
“You choosy, man? You don’t like the first cart?”
“It’s the first day. Gotta have someone to follow.” He glanced at the kid. “And someone behind me to make sure I don’t fuck up.”
The kid laughed. “You must be pretty stupid if you need me to watch you.”
Fallon shrugged and followed Sanchez through another set of swinging doors into a long tunnel which led, eventually, out to the lawn. He pushed the cart past old men playing checkers and soaking up the sun, past old men and women who stared vacantly and others who smiled and hoped he’d stop to talk.
As they reached the walkway that led past the bungalows, Sanchez parked in front of number one.
Fallon kept going. He was doing well so far, but he could see the orderly reading Penthouse outside number sixteen. He didn’t recognize the orderly, and he hoped the orderly wouldn’t recognize him. Katherine Pratt Carrington sat in a lawn chair beside the orderly. She was holding a book, but she wasn’t reading. He hoped she noticed him before he got to her. Otherwise he might startle her.
He worked his way to bungalow fifteen, knocked on the door, went in, and placed a tray on a table in the living room. The person sitting there hardly noticed him. He stepped outside again and heard Katherine Carrington’s voice.
She was speaking to the orderly. “If you must look at that filth, young man, please do it at a respectable distance from me. Every time I look up, I see pudenda and areolae, and frankly, I am offended. You can keep your eye on me just as well over on the grass.”
The orderly said nothing. He closed the magazine, walked a short distance across the lawn, and stretched out.
Fallon wheeled the cart slowly toward her. “Good afternoon, ma’am.”
The guard glanced up, as did Nurse Drexel, who was sitting inside the bungalow watching television.
Fallon placed the tray in front of Mrs. Carrington, and she winked at him. Now that he was here, with her protection all around, he didn’t quite know what to say or do.
“What do we have for lunch today?” she asked cheerfully.
“Clear soup, ma’am.”
“I’m not hungry anyway.”
Fallon bent down, as though he had dropped something from the cart.
“Is Evangeline with you?” whispered Katherine.
“She couldn’t get in.”
Katherine Carrington pulled an envelope from the back papers of her book and slipped it onto Fallon’s cart. She hadn’t expected that they would have much chance to talk.
“John Milton and Paradise Lost?” Fallon spoke in shorthand. He had no time for explanations.
Her eyes narrowed. “You, too?”
“Since my first trip to Searidge.”
“Are you with Rule?”
He shook his head.
“Get me out of here, and I’ll tell you everything I know.”
The orderly looked suddenly in Fallon’s direction. Fallon was sure he’d been recognized, although the orderly was ten feet away.
“Good afternoon, ma’am,” Fallon said to Mrs. Carrington. Nonchantly, he took the handle of the cart and started down the path toward bungalow seventeen. As he walked, he looked around for the best escape route. If he had to run, he wanted to know where he was going.
He stopped at bungalow seventeen. He could feel the orderly’s eyes boring into him. He told himself to stay cool, to play the role. It had worked for him when he punched in. It could work now. He knocked on the bungalow door, then brought the lunch inside. When he stepped out again, the orderly was eating Katherine Carrington’s lime jello.
“I don’t see why we should be wasting perfectly edible food,” Katherine was saying to him. “And I certainly don’t intend to eat that awful stuff myself.”
Fallon almost laughed. He wiped the droplets of perspiration from his forehead, delivered the rest of his lunches, and pushed the empty cart back to the kitchen. He returned the white jacket and cap to their hook and left the Lynnewood Manor with another group of workers.
When he got back to the car, Fallon was exhilarated, like a little boy who had just done something on a dare.
“Did you see her?” asked Evangeline.
“Got in and out without a hitch.” He was grinning.
“Is she all right?”
“She looks fine. We couldn’t talk, but she gave me this note.”
“ ‘I write surreptitiously and in haste!’ ” Fallon began to read while Evangeline drove toward Boston. “ ‘I am here against my will. They tell me it is for my own good, that they want to protect me from danger in this tea-set business. They are lying. They are simply afraid that I might say something to the authorities about Christopher’s death. I believe that he is dead because of the tea set, but the Pratts believe otherwise. I do not understand what requires such secrecy, but they have made me its victim, first in my own home, and now here. They believe that my knowledge of the tea set might be helpful to the people trying to find it. They want no one to approach me, not even that Harvard student, a total innocent.’ ”
“I wish you were,” said Evangeline.
“ ‘Please help me to leave here, Evangeline. I no longer love my daughter or my nephews. They have abused my freedom and shown no respect for my wishes. It is a lie to discourage me from trying to change my situation. Men are guarding me round the clock, and Philip Pratt is on the board of directors at this nursing home.’ ”
“I didn’t know that,” said Evangeline.
“That makes it even harder,” said Fallon.
He finished reading the letter. “ ‘But you must do what you can to get me out of here. Bring a suitcase of clothes with you and take me straight to the airport. I still can be of use someplace, but not here. I must leave this tea-set mess behind. It has already cost me a son and a grandson. I made a mistake twenty-seven years ago. I will pay for it no more.’ ”
Her father. Evangeline was shocked. She looked straight ahead and gripped the wheel. She felt the car accelerate almost involuntarily. Another generation, another tragedy. Evangeline realized that her grandmother had been mourning more than the unrelated deaths of father and son, son and grandson. Her father and brother were both dead because of the tea set and a crazy ancestor who was father to them all.
In the days after Christopher’s death, Katherine Pratt Carrington had kept saying that she could have stopped it. And now came this note, with its cryptic reference to a death twenty-seven years earlier. Evangeline had to find out what her grandmother meant. An angry buzzing noise rattled Evangeline. She was traveling seventy-five miles an hour, and the speedometer alarm was pulling her attention back to the road.
“We have to get her out,” said Peter. “We have to do it quickly and quietly, with no fanfare, no publicity. She can tell us things no one else knows. And with what we know now, I don’t think either of us can rest until we end this thing for good.”
She was beginning to agree with him.
Philip Pratt had spent most of the day talking on the telephone with major Pratt Industries stockholders. He was trying to convince them not to throw their support behind William Rule. He had not been successful. Former supporters told him that they were disappointed in his leadership and uncertain of the company’s future. They said that, in light of the company’s drastic losses over the last few years, a change at the top might be a positive move. While many of the old-line stockholders agreed that William Rule was not the sort they would invite to dinner, they all recognized his skill and his toughness. In twenty years, he had built an insignificant import firm into one of the most successful overseas buying operations in the United States.
“We’ve been very disappointed in your acquisition and diversification efforts,” said the head of an investment firm which held a considerable block of Pratt stock. “All you have to show for seven years is a bad movie company. When Rule becomes chairman, he’ll bring Rule Imports right along with him, and that’s the kind of small, successful operation that makes an excellent acquisition. That alone puts Rule a mile ahead of you. Besides, he isn’t making a tender offer. He isn’t trying to buy up a controlling interest in the stock. He doesn’t have the means. He’s simply a stockholder trying to amass enough votes to take over the top corporate office. If the other stockholders don’t like the job he does, they can vote him out again. Just as they’re doing with you.”
Philip Pratt wanted his tea very strong this afternoon, with nothing but a twist of lemon to cut it. He stared down at the swanboats and sipped the acid, letting it scour his tongue. He did not want to listen to Bennett Soames or his cousin Isabelle.
“Evangeline spent the night with Fallon,” Soames reported. “And this morning, they both eluded our observation. I believe that they will try to get to your aunt. They may have tried already. We could handle the problem more easily if your aunt were moved.” He paused, then added sarcastically, “Our little charade yesterday didn’t work.”
Pratt glanced at Isabelle. He did not want to look weak in front of her. “We had only two other options, Bennett. Tell him everything or eliminate him. We’re not murderers, and I had no intentions of asking Fallon to join us. He’s in it for the adventure and the money.”
Soames nodded. “And we couldn’t rely on him to cooperate in our negotiations with Mr. Rule.”
“Precisely,” said Pratt. “Continue to keep him under surveillance and make sure that he doesn’t get near my aunt.”
“Back to my original point. Your aunt.”
“I would prefer that my mother stay where she is,” said Isabelle. She sat on the sofa and sipped at her tea. She was wearing a flowered cotton sundress and her hair at her shoulders.
Soames did not move and his expression did not change. He simply stared and waited for Pratt to agree with him.
Pratt realized that he was beginning to feel uneasy in Soames’s presence. He had lately been allowing his authority to slip into Soames’s hands. He did not like his secretary giving him orders. “Fallon hasn’t gotten to her yet. I don’t think we’ll have any problems.”
“My mother could not stand another move,” said Isabelle softly.
Soames did not acknowledge her. He continued to stare at Pratt.
“We’re not moving her,” said Pratt with sudden firmness. “We put her there for medical and psychiatric reasons. We wanted to shelter her so that she could deal with her shock. Let’s remember our responsibility to her, Soames. We’re keeping her right where she is. It’s your responsibility to make sure that no one gets to her. Not Fallon, not Rule.”
Bennett Soames showed no annoyance, but he felt his neck growing hot beneath his starched collar. He did not like to be overruled, especially in matters of security, but he knew that Pratt was beginning to feel the pressure of Rule’s deadline and needed to assert himself. Soames could tolerate such displays a while longer.
Philip Pratt turned to Isabelle. “Tell Soames what you’ve found in the diaries.”
