I sat down.
Quirk said, “Okay. Julie Wells is a member of the English family.” He was leaning back now in his swivel chair, his head tipped, staring up at the ceiling, his hands resting on the arms. The rubber grip squeezer lay on the nearly empty desk in front of him. “She is also an intimate of Rachel Wallace. Which means she’s gay or at least bisexual.” I put one foot up on Quirk’s desk again. “Her brother on the other hand is out picketing Rachel Wallace and calling her a dyke and telling her she’s immoral and must be stopped,” Quirk said.
“We have here a family conflict,” Belson said. “And at least an odd coincidence.”
“It could be only that,” I said.
Quirk’s eyes came down from the ceiling and he let the swivel chair come forward until his feet touched the floor.
“It could be,” he said. “But it don’t do us a lot of good to assume that it is.”
“We better get together on how we’re going to handle this,” I said. “We don’t want to charge in and hit her with it, do we?”
“You had your chance to get together with us on this, hot shot,, and you didn’t take it. We’ll decide how to handle it.”
“You want to teach me a lesson, Quirk,” I said, “or you want to find Rachel Wallace?”
“Both,” he said. “Take a walk.”
“How about an address for Cody and Mulready?”
“Blow,” Quirk said.
I toyed with saying, “I shall return.” Figured it was not appropriate and left without a word. As I left Belson blew a smoke ring at me.
I went home feeling lousy. My face hurt, so did my ribs. I’d been making people mad at me all day. I needed someone to tell me I was swell. I called Susan. She wasn’t home. I had a bottle of Molson ale, took two aspirin, made a meatloaf sandwich with lettuce, ate it, drank two more ales with it, and went to bed. I dreamed I was locked in a castle room and Susan kept walking by and smiling when I yelled for help. I woke up mad at her, at five minutes of seven in the morning.
When I got up, I forgot about being mad at Susan. I was mad at my body. I could barely walk. I clanked over to the bathroom, and got under the hot water in the shower, and stretched a little while the hot water ran over me. I was in there for maybe half an hour, and when I got out I had cornbread and country sausage and broiled tomato for breakfast and read the
It was snowing again as I drove on the Southeast Expressway to Dorchester, and the wind was blowing hard so that the snow swirled and eddied in the air. I was going against the commuter rush, but still the traffic was slow, cautious in the snowfall. I slithered off the exit ramp at the big Sears warehouse, stopped at the guard shack, got directions to the main pick-up point, and drove to it.
Quirk had been childish not to give me the addresses. He’d already mentioned that they worked at the Sears warehouse, and he knew I’d go out and find them that way. Immature. Churlish.
I turned up the fleece collar of my jacket before I got out of the car. I put on a blue navy watch cap and a pair of sunglasses. I checked myself in the rearview mirror. Unrecognizable. One of my cleverest disguises. I was impersonating a man dressed for winter. I got out and walked to the warehouse pick-up office.
“Swisher or Michael around?” I said to the young woman behind the call desk.
“Cody and Mulready?”
I nodded.
“They’re out back. I can call them on the horn here.”
“Yeah, would ya? Tell them Mingo’s out here.”
She said into the microphone, “Swisher Cody, Michael Mulready, please report to the call desk. A Mr. Mingo is here.”
There were three other people in the call office, two of them men. I stood behind the others as we waited. In less than two minutes two men came through the swinging doors behind the desk and glanced around the room. One of them was tall with a big red broken-veined nose and long sideburns. His short hair was reddish with a sprinkling of gray. The other man was much younger. He had blow-dried black hair, a thick black mustache, and a seashell necklace tight around his throat. Contemporary.
I said, “Hey, Swisher.”
The tall one with the red hair turned first, then they both looked at me.
“I got a message for you guys from Mingo,” I said. “Can you come around?”
Mustache started toward the hinged end of the counter and Red Hair stopped him. He said something I couldn’t hear, then they both looked at me again. Then Mustache said something I couldn’t hear, then they both bolted through the swinging doors back into the warehouse. So much for my disguise wizardry.
I said, “Excuse me,” to the woman waiting for her pick-up and vaulted the counter.
The young lady behind the counter said, “Sir, you can’t … ”
I was through the swinging doors and into the warehouse. There were vast aisles of merchandise and down the center aisle Cody and Mulready were hot-footing it to the rear. The one with the mustache, Mulready, was a step or two behind Cody. I only needed one. I caught them as they were fumbling with a door that said Emergency Only. Cody had it open when I took Mulready from behind. Cody went on out into the snow. I dragged Mulready
