Invasion of Privacy

smile. “Or maybe the weekend with her boyfriend.”
    “Andrew Dees?”
    “Yes. You know him too?”
    “Not really. We met once.”
    “He is fine fellow. Good match for my Olga. I tell her
    so.”
    “You like him, then.”
    “What is not to like? He has his own business, good manners at the table.”
    “Then you have no idea where your niece might be?”
    “No, but I tell you this thing: my Olga, she cares about other people. She does not leave without telling me where she is going, the people at her bank what she is doing.” Evorov’s mouth twisted a little over his next words. “Her friend there—the one who likes women—you talk to her?”
    “Claude Loiselle. Yes.”
    “And she does not know too where my Olga is?”
    “No.”
    The darkening came over Evorov’s face again. “This is very bad, yes?”
    “It’s hard to say. She’s been missing only since some time yesterday afternoon.”
    “When I am in Soviet Union , it is time of Stalin. You know what that means, Mr. Cuddy? That means missing is gone forever.”
    “Maybe not here, Mr. Evorov.”
    A head shake. “Stalin, he shot many people. Millions, even during the Great Patriotic War. I am over here already in the United States , but my friends, they tell me. All our relatives, Olga’s and mine, are dead from the war or dead from the shootings or dead from the gulags. Stalin, he killed a whole country of people. Hitler was a devil, that one. But Stalin, he was the devil’s devil, yes?”
    When I stood to leave, Ivan Evorov made me promise to call if I found his Olga. Then he rose too, but got no farther than the photo showing him with Judy Garland, and I let myself out.

    “Lieutenant, you have a minute?”
    “Cuddy. Where you been keeping yourself?”
    “Out of state, on a case.”
    I closed the office door behind me. Lieutenant Robert Murphy of Boston Homicide sat at his desk in a building off West Broadway in Southie, a flowered tie snugged tight to the collar button of a starched shirt, the points of the collar held close by a golden stay. The single gold pen from the holder in front of him contrasted, like another piece of jewelry, against the black skin of his hand. Closing a file folder, he replaced the pen in one of the holder’s angled sheaths, next to the miniature American flag flying at forty-five degrees in the other.
    Murphy said, “Sit.”
    I arranged one of the green padded armchairs for conversation, then tilted my head toward the folder he’d closed. “Am I taking you away from anything?”
    “Just another dead end. Had a shooting in Charlestown last night. Seventeen-year-old Townie, three to the back of the head. Neighborhood’s only a mile square, and that’s the ninth hit we’ve had there since Fourth of July. Almost all the folks involved are yours.”
    Meaning Irish-American. “The victims.”
    “And the shooters.”
    “You know who they are?”
    “We know it, all right, based on who the victims are. But knowing’s one thing, and proving’s another. Townie witnesses won’t come forward, and we can’t arrest, much less convict, on motive alone.”
    “What about the victims’ families?”
    “Not a word.” Murphy rocked in his chair, the swivel part squeaking like a saddle. “Last night, for example. I’m watching the medical examiner’s people finish up, and I spot this one woman, she lost her own son two years ago to this shit, and I ask her how long she’s gonna put up with it, with seeing other kids gurneyed off a street corner like her boy was. And you know what she tells me?”
    “No, what?”
    “She says, ‘Hey, if somebody knows who did it, the somebody’ll call the family, tell them what happened. Then, the family wants to take out their grief, one of the sons or nephews’ll go kill the guy.’ ”
    “The Townie code.”
    Murphy let his eyelids drop to half-mast. “Every society has one. Makes me wish I worked South Portland instead of South Boston .”
    “ South Portland . As in Maine ?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Why?”
    “They got Cop Cards up there.”
    “ ‘Cop Cards’?”
    “Right. Like for baseball or football, except they got these color photos of the people on their police force, from patrol officer to chief. There’s information on the backs of them about the cops and their families, and antidrug stuff, and so on. I guess they release one card a week, and the department’s swamped with kids on that day, all wanting the newest ‘collectible.’ ”
    “You’re