“This way,” the woman said, leading me into a cramped reception room dwarfed by a green leather couch and large scarred blond wood desk. A shopworn end table held dog-eared copies of boxing magazines, and pictures of boxers covered walls that cried out for fresh paint.
She ushered me into an inner office and shut the door behind me. The inner office was a lot like the reception room with the exception of two windows looking down at the street. The man behind the desk stood when I entered. He was wearing pleated dress slacks and a short-sleeved shirt open at the neck. His face was lined and had a good start on jowls. His stocky body still showed muscle, but age had added love handles to his waist and streaks of gunmetal gray to his slicked-back black hair. I placed him in his late fifties and decided his life hadn’t been all roses.
He leaned forward and extended his hand. “Jimmy Alpha. I manage Benito Ramirez.”
I nodded, not sure how to respond. My first reaction was to shriek, but that would probably be unprofessional.
He motioned me to a folding chair placed slightly to the side of his desk. “I heard you were back on the street, and I wanted to take this opportunity to apologize. I know what happened in the gym between you and Benito. I tried to call you, but your phone was disconnected.”
His apology stirred fresh anger. “Ramirez’s behavior was unprovoked and inexcusable.”
Alpha looked genuinely embarrassed. “I never thought I’d have problems like this,” he said. “All I ever wanted was to have a top boxer, and now I got one, and it’s giving me ulcers.” He took an economy-sized bottle of Mylanta from his top drawer. “See this? I buy this stuff by the case.” He unscrewed the cap and chugged some. He put his fist to his sternum and sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m genuinely sorry for what happened to you in the gym.”
“There’s no reason for you to apologize. It’s not your problem.”
“I wish that was true. Unfortunately, it is my problem.” He screwed the cap back on, returned the bottle to the drawer, and leaned forward, arms resting on his desk. “You work for Vinnie.”
“Yes.”
“I know Vinnie from way back. Vinnie’s a character.”
He smiled, and I figured somewhere in his travels he must have heard about the duck.
He sobered himself, fixed his eyes on his thumbs, and sagged a little in his seat. “Sometimes I don’t know what to do with Benito. He’s not a bad kid. He just doesn’t know a lot of stuff. All he knows is boxing. All this success is hard on a man like Benito, who comes from nowhere.”
He looked up to see if I was buying. I made a derisive sound, and he acknowledged my disgust.
“I’m not excusing him,” he said, his face a study in bitterness. “Benito does things that are wrong. I don’t have any influence on him these days. He’s full of himself. And he’s got himself surrounded by guys who only got brains in their boxing gloves.”
“That gym was filled with able-bodied men who did nothing to help me.”
“I talked to them about it. Was a time when women were respected, but now nothing’s respected. Drive-by killings, drugs…” He went quiet and sunk into his own thoughts.
I remembered what Morelli had told me about Ramirez and previous rape charges. Alpha was either sticking his head in the sand or else he was actively engaged in cleaning up the mess made by the golden goose. I was putting money on the sand theory.
I stared at him in stony silence, feeling too isolated in his second-floor ghetto office to honestly vent my thoughts, feeling too angry to attempt polite murmurings.
“If Benito bothers you again, you let me know right away,” Alpha said. “I don’t like when this kind of stuff happens.”
“He came to my apartment the night before last and tried to get in. He was abusive in the hall, and he made a mess on my door. If it happens again, I’m filing charges.”
Alpha was visibly shaken. “Nobody told me. He didn’t hurt anybody, did he?”
“No one was hurt.”
Alpha took a card from the top of his desk and scribbled a number on it. “This is my home phone,” he said, handing me the card. “You have any more trouble, you call me right away. If he damaged your door I’ll make good on it.”
“The door’s okay. Just keep him away from me.”
Alpha pressed his lips together and nodded.
“I don’t suppose you know anything about Carmen Sanchez?”
“Only what I read in the papers.”
I TURNED LEFT AT STATE STREET and pushed my way into rush-hour traffic. The light changed, and we all inched forward. I had enough money left to buy a few groceries, so I bypassed my apartment and drove an extra quarter mile down the road to Super-Fresh.
It occurred to me while I was standing at the checkout that Morelli had to be getting food from somewhere or someone. Did he scuttle around Super-Fresh wearing a Groucho Marx mustache and glasses with a fake nose attached? And where was he living? Maybe he was living in the blue van. I’d assumed he’d dumped it after being spotted, but maybe not. Maybe it was too convenient. Maybe it was his command headquarters with a cache of canned goods. And, I thought it was possible he had monitoring equipment in the van. He’d been across the street, spying on Ramirez, so maybe he was listening as well.
I hadn’t seen the van on Stark Street. I hadn’t been actively looking for it, but I wouldn’t have passed it by, either. I didn’t know a whole lot about electronic surveillance, but I knew the surveillor had to be fairly close to the surveillee. Something to think about. Maybe I could find Morelli by looking for the van.
I was forced to park at the rear of my lot, and did so harboring a few testy thoughts about handicapped old people who took all the best parking slots. I gripped three plastic grocery bags in each hand, plus a six-pack. I eased the Cherokee’s door closed with my knee. I could feel my arms stretching against the weight, the bags clumsily banging around my knees as I walked, reminding me of a joke I’d once heard having to do with elephant
