Eddie Bourque: Speak Ill Of The Living Part 23

"Cla.s.sified-accounts payable," answered a woman with southern flavor in her voice.

"Hi, my name is Lew Cuhna," Eddie said. "I'm afraid I have a paperwork problem. I placed a prepaid cla.s.sified ad for my company recently, and I can't remember the dates it was to run, so I don't know when to renew it. My boss is on my case about it."

"Oh my!"

"Yeah, he's a stickler for record keeping."

"Just give me a second, Mr. Cuhna." She rapped a keyboard. "We don't want out customers in hot water with the boss."

"No ma'am."

"Oh, there it is," she said. "You're all set, prepaid for three more weeks."

"And you're sure the name on that ad is Lew Cuhna, of, um..." Where the h.e.l.l did Cuhna live? "...of Ma.s.sachusetts?"

"Yup-Chelmsford, Ma.s.s."

"Very good, thank you." He hung up.

Eddie thought back to the recent trouble with his morning delivery, when the paper was torn apart every day. He never did find those cla.s.sified sections.

His paper started getting messed up after Eddie spoke to Cuhna. But the Post had arrived intact each day since Lew had been murdered.

Those weren't racc.o.o.ns that were rifling through Eddie's paper every morning.

It was Lew.

Eddie slapped his palm on the table. Of course! Insurance!

Lew was in some kind of trouble and Eddie was his insurance. Cuhna knew that Eddie studied the Post's cla.s.sifieds every day-they had spoken about it at the cop shop. Cuhna placed a message in the paper that only Eddie would recognize, prepaid in case something happened to him. And each day Cuhna detoured through Pawtucketville on his way to his office, stopping early in the morning to swipe Eddie's cla.s.sified section.

As long as Lew was healthy, Eddie would never see the message. It wasn't the sort of arrangement Cuhna could have expected to keep up for long-you can't steal a man's paper forever. He must have thought the danger would soon pa.s.s, whatever it was.

Eddie cursed himself for not reading the Post the first day he had found it intact. He had already lost two days. But at least he had found the message. He read it over again. Now what the heck did it mean?

Trouble for me.

That much was obvious.

Lew had placed the ad because he suspected someone might be after him, yet he did not go to the police. Why not? Perhaps Lew had gotten mixed up in something illegal. If he had been dabbling with the bookmakers or the heroin wholesalers, he would have been reluctant to ask the cops for help.

I trust only journalists.

Eddie tried to remember what Cuhna had said to him at the police station. Something about Eddie being a newsman, and that Lew trusted a good newsman. Maybe that was Cuhna's way of telling Eddie that he had chosen him to receive the message. Christ, Eddie thought, he could have been more specific about what he was entrusting to Eddie.

Left the key with the two giants, you know the duo.

Made no sense. They key to what? A lock? To the mystery of Cuhna's murder? Or the key to this riddle? Eddie couldn't think of any "giants" who formed a duo. He thought for a moment about the tallest people he knew. Two giants? Two big cops who were partners, maybe? Naw, this line had to be allegorical. Two giants...a duo...This message was so G.o.ddam cryptic! For all Eddie knew, Cuhna was talking about the duo of peanut b.u.t.ter and Fluff.

Don't send the cavalry; follow the Union rider to General Lee's surrender.

The cavalry could be the cops. Why wouldn't Lew want Eddie to call the cops? Especially if he knew the message would only be seen if he were abducted or killed? Eddie rubbed his eyes. No cops...hmmmm, could there be a leak in the Police Department? Eddie read the line again.

Was Cuhna afraid of a dirty cop?

The last part of the message seemed nonsense.

Union rider? General Lee?

Civil War General Robert E. Lee had surrendered to the Union at Appomattox. Eddie couldn't imagine that Lew Cuhna had meant for him to ride The Late Chuckie's rat bike to Virginia. It seemed to be another metaphor. But for what?

Dammit Lew. Why couldn't you have just spelled it out?

Eddie knew the answer-Cuhna had hidden something of great value and didn't want to lose it to the wrong people. So he had created a cipher he thought only Eddie could break.

Eddie drained a full pot of coffee while experimenting with Cuhna's words. He a.s.signed numbers to the letters, jumbled the characters, read things backward, tried to decipher anagrams. No luck. Either Lew Cuhna had typed his cla.s.sified ad with the Enigma machine, or this message was somehow simpler than it seemed.

The phone rang.

He glanced to the clock as he answered; he had been working on Lew Cuhna's code for two hours.

Bobbi was on the line.

"I was getting worried about you," Eddie said.

"Some worry lines would do you good," she said. "So you won't look young enough to be my baby."

"You don't need an under-employed kid in his thirties."

"I'd take one if I could," she said. She suddenly s.h.i.+fted the topic. "Have you seen the paper-this guy they found dead in Dunstable, James J. Whistle? He testified against Henry at his trial thirty years ago. Did you see that?"

Eddie frowned. "I didn't see the paper yet, but I, uh, heard about it."

"That guy could have helped us, but now it's too late."

"He may help us yet," Eddie said. He pulled a topic switch on her for once. "Have you and Henry ever talked about having a family?"

She laughed. "You mean kids? This just reminds me that I've never touched the man I married. Closest I've come is touching his letters, which I know he had in his hands-oh, gawd, look at the time!"

"Wha?"

"Forget all that because this is important. I'm hanging up now, but don't go anywhere-not even to the bathroom."

"Huh?"

Click.

Eddie shrugged and stared at the cordless phone. His sister-in-law was as puzzling as Lew Cuhna's message. She had called for something important, so she had to hang up? Maybe it was best that she and Henry couldn't have kids. Oh, dammit! Eddie had forgotten to tell her to call Detective Orr.

The phone rang in Eddie's hands.

He answered sharply, "What now?"

A man's voice asked, "Mr. Edward Bourque?"

"Oh! Sorry. Yes, this is he."

The man explained that he was a counselor in the federal penitentiary system, working at the facility holding Henry in New York.

Eddie felt a flash of terror. He was speechless. What had happened to Henry? Stabbed. Hanged. Shot trying to escape.

"You there, Mr. Bourque?" the man said into the silent telephone.

Eddie cleared his throat. "Yes, yes. What's the matter with Henry?"

"Nothing, sir-hold please."

Cla.s.sical music came on the line while Eddie was holding.

Eddie felt relief. This was strange-it was odd to worry for his brother. He had rarely thought about Henry before his brother's letter had arrived. And now Eddie was getting heart palpitations over a phone call from the prison.

The line went quiet a moment and Eddie thought he was disconnected, then another man got on the line: "It's not my voice you hear, of course, it's only an approximation."

"Henry?"

"My voice exists in the physical world as a disturbance among molecules of air. The telephone replicates the disturbance on your end."

"Sounds like a good copy, Henry."

"The real magic is in your mind," Henry said. "After the air molecules play a beat on your eardrum, the rhythm becomes electrical and goes to the brain. That's where the mind, the larger part of you, in between man and G.o.d but much more like the latter, interprets those electrical pulses and gives you the music of my voice. It's no different if there is no phone and we are speaking in person. It's still not my voice you hear, only the simulated echo of an idea that starts in my mind and ends in yours."

Henry's brain was like a rocket with no wings, twisting wildly in the stratosphere at a thousand miles an hour. If Eddie could only help him focus his thought...

"I think you ought to fight for your freedom," Eddie said, pulling a topic switch on Henry, too.

"Did you find my five-sided table?"

"I'm closing in on it," Eddie said. "I saw Jimmy Whistle."

A pause. "How is that son-of-b.i.t.c.h?"

"Fine when I saw him, but now he's dead-murdered."

"They know who did it?"

"Nope."

"And here I am, locked away without an alibi."

The words chilled Eddie, and he wasn't sure why-when it came to gallows humor, journalists were nearly as bad as cops. Henry seemed to sense Eddie's unease.

"I can't cry for Jimmy."

"I wouldn't expect...I mean-he testified against you."

"It's the d.a.m.ndest thing," Henry said, "but I can't cry at all. I used to cry every day after I got locked up. Most guys here, they wail into a towel to cover it up. But I said, what the f.u.c.k? I wanna cry, I'll cry."

"What happened?"

"There was this big motherf.u.c.ker, nicknamed Monk because he barely ever said two words-as if he had taken vow of silence. He saw me cry one time. I'll never forget what he told me. 'Boy,' he said, 'I don't like your face like that.' This was the longest conversation Monk ever had in twenty years on the block. I p.i.s.sed battery acid in those days, so I told him, 'You don't like my face, what you gonna do about it?' "

Henry laughed at the memory.

Eddie laughed, too. "So what did Monk do?"

"He didn't like my face, so he tried to cut it off."

Eddie jumped to his feet, slack jawed, screaming without sound. He pictured Henry's scar, the long, purple earthworm around his head.

"Since then, I can't cry," Henry explained. "He stole that from me, and I never forgave him. So you can forgive me if I don't show my compa.s.sion for Jimmy Whistle."

Eddie stammered, "Yeah, Henry...sure."

"My bride tells me you've been helping her out in Lowell," he said, cheerfully. "You're a good man, little brother. Smart. That's what I like. That's why I knew I could turn to you. I knew you could find the truth."

Eddie didn't understand. "Do you mean about Roger Lime?" he said, but the moment had pa.s.sed and Henry was already into a new thought.

"We've only got a little time left," Henry said. "I'll think about what you told me, maybe call the public defender."

"You mean you might challenge your conviction in court?"

"It would be a leap of faith I haven't been able to make." The line beeped three times. "Uh-oh, we have, like, ten seconds to say goodbye."

Eddie had too many questions, about Henry, Roger Lime, the five-side table, Lew Cuhna's note from the grave. Henry may have been borderline crazy, but he was brilliant. Eddie blurted, "Where in Lowell do I find Lee's surrender?"

Henry laughed. "Have you tried the library?"

The line fell silent without even a click.

Chapter 24.

Try the library?