Page 45 of A River Red With Blood
“I forgot to ask, but I imagine the living pay better.”
I took in the candle and the ashtray.
“You don’t need a Fruit Loops-scented candle,” I told Angel.“And you don’t need a Chinese ashtray,” I told Louis.
“Great,” said Angel.“We’ll pay for them, then we’re good to go.”
We ate an early dinner at Boda on Congress.Angel opted for a beer, I had a glass of wine, and Louis ordered a margarita made to his own specifications, which turned out to be a combinationof fruit, mezcal, and habanero tincture; heavy on the tincture, at his insistence, but not, he emphasized, too heavy.
“You need to taste it,” he said, “not feel it.”
“Feel it how?”I asked.
“So you get the burn on your lips, not lower down.You don’t want to end up with, y’know, an ass like the Japanese flag.”
“Thank you,” I said.“That’s an image to cherish.”
The drinks arrived, along with wings on the house as a reward for Louis’s regular custom.Once Louis’s lips and tongue had returned to normal after the first sip of his drink, I told them of my plan to base myself closer to The Plains for a few days while I looked into the death of Scott Theriault.
“You think you’re going to be given the red-carpet treatment at that school?”Louis asked.
“They may be smart enough to realize hostility won’t help them.But from what I’ve seen in the newspapers and online, they’ve tried to be open to questions.”
“Any sign of Spero being sued by the boy’s parents?”asked Angel.
Trust Angel to spot a detail I’d missed.Ward Vose hadn’t raised the prospect of litigation, and neither had Alcock, but if it was their intention to sue, I’d like to be told.Investigating how and why Scott Theriault died was not the same as establishing culpability that might assist in a civil action.I had no objection to working on either inquiry, but I didn’t want to have to go over the same ground twice.If I was clear on what Alcock wanted from the start, I could ensure my questions were framed correctly, and whatever I gleaned from witnesses or interview subjects would cover everything.Of course, any decision on a lawsuit might not be Vose’s alone to make.Even if he didn’t want to sue Spero, Scott’s mother and stepfather might.While I’d be talking to them soon, they weren’t my clients, and would have their own lawyer.Regardless, it was another complicating factor to bear inmind.
Over food we spoke of somethings and nothings, as old friends will.Angel told us of a man from Rochester, New York, named Miguel Himes who once dreamed of setting up an agencysupplying minority individuals to serve as guests at the parties and dinners of WASP liberals, enabling the hosts to appear more inclusive and so impress friends and associates with their progressiveness.
“Himes had them all on his books,” Angel said.“Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Jews—Orthodox and Reform.He knew a lot of unemployed people who could hold a conversation.He figured he just had to give them a fake history based on interviews with the hosts, and make sure they didn’t drink too much, because that’s when it all starts to go wrong at dinner parties.”
“What about white guests for Black dinner parties?”I asked.
“Yeah,” said Louis, “like anyone has ever said, ‘You know what this party needs?More white people.’”
I told him he wasn’t going to be invited to any more of my parties.He reminded me that I didn’t hold parties, and even if I did, I’d struggle to find a suitable venue now that all the phone booths were gone.
“So what happened to Miguel Himes and his great idea?”I asked Angel.
“He went to jail in Florida,” said Angel.“Can’t remember why.I think it was for fraud.In Florida, it usually is.”
And so a pleasant evening passed, and still Louis did not say what he had been doing down in New York.
Chapter 41
Sabine Drew spent the night in Portland.She stayed at the Inn at St John, where a value room with a shared bath was within her budget and the parking was free.While she could have managed the round trip from Haynesville to Portland and back in a day, she preferred not to drive after dark because her night vision was poor.Also, an evening in Portland was a treat, so she took in a movie at the Nick and was out in time to order a Miller High Life for a dollar ninety-five at Dock Fore, the best happy hour in town, where she listened to the old geezers jawing while she read a magazine.She then ate a hamburger in Rosie’s, drank another beer, and worked off some of the calories by walking the mile and a half back to the inn.In her room, she unpacked her purchases from Pinecone+Chickadee—she’d picked up a neat cotton bag featuring a seven-eyed cat—before watching some TV and going to sleep.
During all that time, she tried not to think about Scott Theriault or Mallory Norton.They were not her concern, or so she told herself—except they were, because even to care a little made them so.But the private investigator did not want her help, and she understood why, though she did not for one moment regret having poisoned that dreadful man, and neither had he ever troubled her by appearing in her visions.Unlikely as it sounded, it might have been that his soul was now at peace; that, or God, if He existed, hadn’t liked him either, and consigned him to the void.Someone had once asked Sabine whether, with her gifts, she possessed any insight into the nature of God.Sabine replied that she’d never caught sight of Him, only the pain He left behind, like coming across wreckage at sea in the wake of the storm that caused it.
Sabine slept soundly in her comfortable bed, and what dreams she had did not stay with her come morning.But as she watched the sunlight brighten the edges of the drapes, and listened to the sounds of waking life on Congress Street, she thought of drowned boys and missing girls, and of Mallory Norton’s parents waking to that same dawn, waking to unknowing.Sabine got up, showered, harvested free fruit and pastries from the breakfast nook, and drove to The Plains.
Chapter 42
Santopietro rarely used the full version of his first name, Dante.To his friends, who were few, he was Dan.His first—and, so far, only wife—used to call him Santi, but she was dead and the diminutive had passed away with her.To the locals in The Plains, The Forks, and farther south in Bingham and Madison, as well as to the staff and students at Spero, he was Mr S—unless they were in trouble, when he was very much Mr Santopietro, or simply, sir.
Santopietro was currently in his office, and intended to spend the rest of the day there, just as he would also spend much of Sunday morning in it.Spero required his daily attention.It might have been a fraction the size of a regular school, but its students required more attention than the norm.Santopietro had learned a lot from his time as a pupil at Élan, including the inadvisability of condoning sadism.True, some Spero parents wouldn’t have objected to their sons being beaten regularly with briars and left to hang overnight on a cross so long as they weren’t causing an uproar at home, especially if the punishments resulted in permanent modification to the boys’ behavior.One or two of the parents wouldn’t even have given two shits on a nickel if their sons died suddenly in their sleep.But then, nobody sent a child to Spero out of love, tough or otherwise.At best, they exiled them there because they couldn’t cope, and at worst, because they didn’t care.Santopietro might not have liked all of his charges either, but he found it depressing to think that he had more regard for them than some of their own mothers and fathers.He tried his best to ensure that the staff didn’t compound the problem.Even if he didn’t pay them enough to care a lot, he paid sufficient for them to care some.
Speaking of which, earlier that morning Patrick Elgot had reported to Santopietro that Anthony Marshall slept through the night and appeared to be recovering well after the trauma of the ablution block, physically at least, though he remained more subdued than before.Elgot was about to go off duty for a couple of days to attend the Head of the Charles Regatta down in Boston, where his girlfriend was operating a food stall at the Riverbender.His absence required a certain reorganization of the schedule, but Santopietro didn’t make a fuss because Elgot was obliging, kind to the kids, and had given plenty of notice, even if he did have a big sharp stick up his ass.Also, it suited Santopietro to have Elgot far from the school.Before he left for Boston, Elgot again raised the subject of Leonard Levesque, and whether Santopietro had spoken to him about Marshall.It didn’t do any good for Santopietro to point out, not for the first time, that Marshall hadn’t named Levesque as the culprit.
