10
Monique Lamont sits in a marble and cherry kitchen on Mount Vernon Street in Beacon Hill, one of the most expensive and coveted addresses in Boston. She is drinking her first martini of the day, straight up, Grey Goose, one pimiento-stuffed green olive, and a glass that she took out of the freezer.
She wears jeans and a loose-fitting denim shirt. The warm-up suit she had on earlier is in the Dumpster behind the nineteenth-century brick complex where the apartment was safely and secretly tucked away until this morning when Sammy disclosed the location to the troops, insisting that the police patrol the area, insisting that she can’t stay in her Cambridge house, not now, not that she would. She will always see the back door, the key box, the gas can. She will always see him in her bedroom, the gun pointed at her head as he did what he wanted, as he re-created her into his own image — a small, filthy creature, a nothing, a nobody.
“I only wish I’d killed him myself,” she says.
Huber sits across the table from her, drinking his second beer. He is having a hard time looking at her, his gaze interrupted as if his eye muscles are suddenly palsied.
“You’ve got to get beyond this, Monique,” he says. “I know that’s easy for me to say. But you’re not thinking right, couldn’t possibly be under the circumstances.”
“Shut up, Jessie. If it ever happens to you, you’ll find yourself howling at the damn moon. Then you’ll understand empathy.”
“So it helps if you ruin everything else in your life? You shouldn’t have told them about this place.”
“And what? Refuse police protection when I don’t know who’s behind what happened, who put him up to it?”
“We don’t know for a fact that anybody did.”
“Go to a hotel? Walk into the lobby, find the media in packs, waiting to tear into me?”
“You’re the one who went to the media,” he says somberly, his eyes moving around, doing their cold, calculating thing. “Now we have to take your crap and make caviar out of it.”
He has the worst metaphors and analogies of anyone Lamont has ever met. She says, “Why did you let him? You could have told him the documents lab was tied up, that Rachael wasn’t there, was busy, something. That was stupid, Jessie.”
“Win’s always had a special membership to Club Crime Lab. He’s too smart. If I’d started making excuses, he would have known right away something was going on. He trusts me like a father.”
“Then he’s not as smart as you think.” She sips her martini, drains the glass, eats the olive.
“And you’re a Harvard snob.” Huber gets up, opens the freezer, gets out the Grey Goose, a frozen glass, makes her another, forgets the olive.
She stares at the martini he sets on the table, stares at it long enough for him to remember the olive.
“You know what that guy’s IQ is?” Huber says from inside the refrigerator. “Higher than yours and mine put together.”
She replays that unforgiving footage, Win seeing her, handing her his jacket, telling her to take deep breaths. She sees him seeing her naked and powerless and degraded.
“He just can’t take tests, the damndest thing,” Huber continues, opens another beer. “Graduated from high school with a four-point-oh, valedictorian, most likely to succeed, best-looking, best everything except for one minor thing. Tanked his SATs. Then, after college, tanked his GREs, his LSATs. He can’t take tests. Something happens to him.”
Win didn’t show up at the Globe. He defied her. He has no respect for her after seeing her…
“I hear there are people like that.” Huber sits back down. “Brilliant but can’t take tests.”
“I’m not interested in his learning disabilities,” Lamont says. “What exactly did he find out at the lab?” The vodka has made her tongue bigger, less nimble, her thoughts stuttering. “Or what does he think he found out?”
“He probably doesn’t know what it means. Can’t prove anything, anyway.”
“That’s not what I asked!”
“Notes from a phone conversation with my broker.”
“Oh God.”
“Don’t worry. They won’t find fingerprints, nothing to link that letter to me. One thing I do know is forensic science.” He smiles. “Win probably thinks it’s you. For that matter, probably thinks you’re behind it. Probably thinks Roy did it, called him a half-breed.” Huber laughs. “Now that for sure pissed him off.”
“Another one of your impulsive, high risk decisions.”
He didn’t ask her, just did it. Then he told her after the fact because the more she knows, the more implicated she is, that’s been his strategy all along.
“It did exactly what I said it would.” Huber drinks his beer. “You threaten him, insult him, try to scare him off a case, and he locks his jaws on it like a pit bull.”
She is silent, sips her martini, trapped.
She says, “It wasn’t necessary. He’s a pit bull anyway.”
“Your fault for insisting on talking to him in person instead of over the phone. You should have left him down there in Knoxville.” He pauses, his face twitching. “Maybe you got a thing about him. That’s what it looks like.”
“Go to hell, Jessie.”
“Of course, it’s a blessing he was here. Providence, your guardian angel, living right, whatever,” he indelicately, indifferently goes on. “Win got pissed and came to see you. As it turns out, my little ploy actually did us all quite a favor. You’re still alive, Monique.”
“Don’t sound so disappointed.”
“Monique…”
“I’m not joking.” She holds his gaze, doesn’t flinch, realizes she has come to hate him, to wish him harm, misery, poverty, death. Then, “I don’t want Toby coming back. He’s worthless. I’m done with that favor. I’m done with any favors.”
“He can’t stand working for you anyway.”
“I’ve had enough of you, Jessie. I have for a long time.” The vodka is making her uninhibited. He can go to hell. “I told you I’m not playing along with it anymore. I goddamn meant it. It’s not worth it.”
“Of course it is. You’ve gotten what you want, Monique. What you deserve,” he says, and there is no mistaking what he means.
She stares at him, shocked. “What I deserve?”
He stares back at her.
“I deserve that? You’re saying I deserve that! You bastard!”
“I meant you work hard, should get something for it.” His eyes don’t jump around this time. They look at her, flat, nothing in them.
She starts to cry.
It is dark now,the moon new.
Win opens the driver’s door of Nana’s old Buick, stopped in the middle of the road again, watching Miss Dog wandering aimlessly again, headlights flashing in her old, blind eyes.
“That’s it. The end,” Win says, furious. “Come here, girl,” he coaxes, whistling. “Come on, Miss Dog. What’cha doing on the street again, huh? She forget to shut the door? Let you out, her fat ass too lazy to make sure you got back in? Her son-in-law lowlife kick you again?”
Miss Dog’s tail droops, her head hangs. She drops to her belly as if she’s done something wrong. Win gently picks her up, keeps talking, wonders if she can hear him at all, places her inside the car, drives off, tells her where she’s going and what will happen next. Maybe she hears him, maybe she doesn’t. She licks his hand. He parks behind Nana’s house, and the wind chimes are chiming softly, the night clear, the cool air barely stirring, the chimes quietly chiming as if telling secrets, and he unlocks the back door, Miss Dog draped over his shoulder like a furry sack of potatoes.