“Trying to make sure an innocent man doesn’t—”
“Hey,” from over my left shoulder, “what’s going on?”
Hamilton glanced that way, then belted out, “Trevor, this asshole was just leaving.”
I turned to see three guys, looking very football, walking in stride with each other. The one in the center seemed to be the leader, with a Mohawk cut and a quarterback’s build. The other two were shorter and heavier, kind of second-string offensive guards, though they affected the same hairdo.
Quarterback said, “You’re leaving, asshole.”
“Perhaps not just yet, Trevor.”
He grabbed me by the lapel of my suit jacket. I let him pull me toward him, then stepped aside and did a sweep kick, taking his feet out from under him. He landed with a very satisfying “whoosh” sound gushing from his lungs.
“Hey,” said one of his friends, facial features tightening but his body language making no attempt to back it up, “you can’t leg-whip somebody. That’s against the rules.”
“Let’s hope a rule is all I break.”
Again from behind me, I heard something, but more a car gunning its engine than a voice, though I thought I caught the word “Lissy” shouted over the noise.
The car turned out to be a Lincoln Navigator, roughly the size of a Navy destroyer. A bearish guy who looked just like he did on television broadcasts from the statehouse steps stormed out of the S.U.V., and a kid who could have been Lisabeth’s younger brother slipped from the passenger’s side.
Grant Hamilton strode mightily toward us as Trevor, still on the ground, coughed and gurgled a little. “What are you doing with my daughter?”
I glanced toward the young lady in distress, tending to her fallen knight, and I tried to take the sensibilities of her younger brother into account. “Asking questions about some accusations against Devonne Tinch.”
Lisabeth turned to her father. “He’s a private eye, working for that... boy.”
Daddy’s jaw jutted out like Gibraltar. “I have a re-election campaign to run, and we have nothing to say to you.”
“Fine, but I was just assaulted by — what, your daughter’s boyfriend?”
Grant Hamilton whipped out a cell phone. “I’m calling the police.”
Time to bluff. “Just came from there, actually. But it’s a nice department, and Sergeant Detective Smith is a sweetie. On the other hand, we could just go to your house, straighten this out, before the media gets a hold of it and blows it way out of proportion. In front of your electorate.”
Daddy fumed, but instead of 911, he hit a speed dial and announced that everybody would be home in fifteen minutes. With a guest.
“Home” turned out to be a garrison colonial on about three acres. I parked at the curb, since the driveway was dominated by a Mercedes sports coupe and the Navigator, which had been barreling ahead of me for the past ten minutes. Grant Hamilton exited the driver’s side, his son the passenger’s. Lisabeth had chosen — stamping her feet — to stay by the side of boyfriend Trevor back at the high school.
Hamilton himself ushered me through a living room to a family one that had various placards on stakes, with legends reading HAMILTON: INCUMBENT, TRUSTWORTHY; THE RIGHT TO LIFE; and MANDATORY SENTENCING MAKES SENSE, just in case you had some doubt about where “the incumbent” stood on such issues with elections coming up early the next month. Then he bellowed out a “Willa” while I descended three beautifully tiled steps toward a daybed next to a door that, from its window panels, gave onto the attached garage. By the time I’d turned around, the young son had disappeared and the wife had replaced him in the room, moving with that almost athletic grace authority seems to give certain people, in this case a superior court judge still on the law-school side of fifty, wearing a business suit.
“Willa,” said Hamilton, “this man is a private investigator working for that Tinch bastard.”
I thought Mrs. Hamilton might flinch, but instead she smiled, as though used to such introductions. “And does this private investigator have a name?”
“John Cuddy,” I said, taking a seat in the middle of the daybed.
“Mr. Cuddy, Willa Hamilton.”
She lowered herself into an easy chair the way a ballerina might. Her husband stayed standing.
I addressed the judge. “I know this is difficult for you.”
“You know nothing,” said Her Honor, pleasantly enough.
Okay. “Your Lisabeth claims to have been raped two months ago, yet she reported it only last week. Did she tell you sooner?”
“We decline to answer.” Again, pleasantly.
“Judge, I don’t think that’ll be an acceptable response in a courtroom.”
Now a pleasant smile. “We’re not in a courtroom, sir.”
“I just saw your daughter having an argument with her close friend, Gloria Carson.”
“Good family and a fine girl.”
I noticed the order of the compliments as Daddy chimed in with, “Until she took up with that ghetto scum.”
I began to get the feeling that it was mostly Mrs. Hamilton who had advocated for the METCO program to come into Calem. Looking from one parent to the other, I said, “Are you going to give your permission for an abortion?”
Grant Hamilton’s face actually went purple. “Our daughter was raped! Of course—”
Mom said simply, “Grant?” in that same pleasant tone, but it shut him up like he’d been slapped.
I decided I was glad I’d never dated a judge.
Then Mrs. Hamilton made a graceful gesture with her right hand.
“Darling, I believe it’s your turn to drive Kenny and his friends to their soccer game.”
Daddy said, “Yes, it is,” then bellowed out a “Kenny, let’s go,” before heading toward the door that opened onto the garage.
I stayed with his wife. “Where do Gloria and her good family live?”
On his way, the senator stopped at a telephone table. He grabbed a White Pages and slung it at me, the book fluttering like a shot duck on the way down.
Grant Hamilton said, “Take it with you as you leave.”
When I got back into my car, I searched for Gloria’s last name. No “Carson” listed for the town of Calem.
Figured. A cellular moment.
I dialed a friend at the Department of Revenue, the commonwealth’s tax arm. He gave me a hard time, but on my fourth “Bernie, it’s just an address,” he gave me that, too.
III
“Gloria is not here, and you are not to see her anywhere.”
The woman who opened the front door bore a striking resemblance to her daughter, who would age awfully well if the gene pool somehow held its sway over American fast food.
The woman’s slight Spanish accent led me to say, “Mrs. Carson, may I ask where you’re from originally?”
“Cuba. Now, please go.”
“Mrs.—”
“I have been in this country as many years as the Castro refugees were when we Marielitos arrived here, thanks to your President Carter and our ‘beloved’ Fidel. I know my rights of citizenship, and among them is the one not to talk with you.”
The door closed.
Maurice Tinch wasn’t at home when I knocked on the door of the three-decker in Dorchester, a neighborhood that functioned pretty well as a mixing pot — if not a melting pot — of Irish-, Greek-, and African-Americans. However, a neighbor tending her window boxes told me he’d likely as not be at the tavern down the block.
And he was, corner stool, using the nail of an index finger to peel the label off an empty bottle of Miller High Life. Tinch seemed to take great pride in his work.