Read Online The Staked Goat - Jeremiah Healy by Jeremiah Healy - Free Book Online Page A

the closet and pushed most of the garbage
aside. I pulled out the old Samsonite three-suiter, even though I
would have to pack only one outfit. A dark, somber one.
    After I packed, I carried the suitcase to the door
and looked down at the envelope. I pocketed it and went downstairs.
    I walked to the rental and returned it to the agency.
I carried my burdens to the Szechuan Chinese restaurant in the next
block. The decor was red leather with faintly illuminating Chinese
lanterns. There were few patrons. I was shown to a small booth by a
hostess in a cocktail dress, slit discreetly up the side. I ordered a
vodka and orange juice.
    One screwdriver makes me thirsty for two. Two make me
hearty and gregarious. Three make me unnecessarily aware of little
things, like the exact shade of a woman's lipstick. Four make me
morose. I stopped at three and ate my dinner. I also decided not to
mail the tape envelope. I settled up and stepped out into a howling
wind. I hailed a cab, giving Nancy's address in Southie.
    The taxi driver had country and western music on the
radio. The back seat was black vinyl with little tufts of white,
puffy stuffing poking through. I thought of Craigie's body after the
fire, then made my mind change the subject.
    Her building in South Boston was a three-decker on a
clean street, sort of a wooden version of the D'Amicos' place. Like
the Italian North End, the Irish and Italian neighborhoods in Southie
had been stable, if stubborn, for generations. A Lithuanian section,
dating mostly from the end of World War II, straddled Broadway a
little farther west.
    There were three buzzers arranged vertically on the
outside doorjamb. Each would signify a different door of the
three—story house. The bottom and middle name plates said "M.
Lynch" and "A. Lynch." The top one said "N.
Meagher." I pushed it. Strains from some detestable C&W song
reached me through the cabbie's half-open window, something like "I'm
breaking my back putting up a front for you."
    I heard footsteps tripping down the stairs inside the
door, and a light flicked on over my head. No intercom and buzzer
systems in this part of town. The door opened on a chain, and I heard
her laugh.
    "Well, well," she said, slipping the chain
and swinging open the door. "A pleasure call, I hope."
    She was wearing a gray Red Sox T-shirt and white
tennis shorts. A bath towel, draped clumsily, covered her left hand
from the wrist down.
    I said, "I'm sorry to bother you at home, but I
have a plane to catch, and I wanted to talk with you before I left."
    She went up on tiptoes and saw the cabbie over my
shoulder. She shivered a bit. "Pay off your cab and come on up.
I'll freeze in this doorway, but I'd be glad to drive you to Logan
afterwards."
    As I turned back toward the cab, I heard her say,
"It's okay, Drew." Someone moved on the second landing and
a door closed.
    I settled with the driver and lugged my suitcase to
her stoop. She tapped ahead of me in sandals up the two flights to
her apartment.
    Her door opened from the staircase into a big
kitchen, perhaps fifteen by fifteen. A screened-in but sealed-off
porch lay behind the kitchen. Once inside, I dropped my bag on the
floor, and we turned left into a corridor that led to the front of
the house. She had a cozy living room with a small bay window. There
were throw pillows on the floor, and brick-and-board bookcases along
both walls. Two low tables and some indirect lighting completed the
furnishings.
    She laid the towel carefully on one of the tables and
asked me if I wanted a drink.
    "Ice water?" I said, feeling the
dehydration of the Chinese food and the screwdrivers.
    "I have stronger," she said.
    "Thanks, just water."
    She lowered WCOZ just a bit on the stereo under a
shelf of mystery paperbacks. "Let me take your coat," she
said.
    I shrugged out of it, and she left with it for the
kitchen. Her bottom looked firm in the shorts, her legs straight and
slim beneath them.
    She was back in a flash. "One ice water,"
she