Shallow Graves

afghan Nancy ’s mother had crocheted two years before she’d died. Even so, my kidneys felt as though someone had forgotten to hinge them.
    I got up and put the couch back together, folding the afghan on an armrest. At the bedroom door, I knocked, got no answer, and knocked louder. Opening it, I saw a made bed. I didn’t hear any water running in the bathroom, so I moved all the way back to the kitchen. There was a note propped up between | the salt and pepper shakers:

    John,
    I woke up early and took Renfield to the vet’s. I looked in on you but you were asleep.
    I’m sorry you got the floor and I’m sorry I got mad at you.

    Call me later,
    Nancy

    I read my kidneys the part about the floor, but they weren’t much comforted. Raiding the refrigerator, I had a couple of English muffins and orange juice.
    In the bathroom, the scent of Nancy ’s potpourri was zingy in the air. I weighed myself on her scales. It was an old building, and depending on where I put the scales, the needle moved a little more or a little less. I liked by the sink best, coming in at just under one ninety there.
    I wanted to see the Dani woman’s apartment house before talking with the people at the modeling agency. Given the time, I couldn’t really go home, change, and run for a while first, so I decided to make a short visit instead.

    “I got to Mrs. Feeney’s just as she was putting the carnations out on the sidewalk.“
    But I get roses instead?
    I straightened back up, almost using the headstone to steady myself against the stiffness. “Transference, Beth.“
    Fight with Nancy ?
    “Not exactly.“ I told her about Renfield.
    So, the question is, did the cat jump or was he pushed?
    “Not funny, kid.“
    I’m sorry, John, but if it was an accident, you can’t let it get you down.
    “I know.“
    The rain had turned to mist, the mist curtaining a rainbow that vaulted over Logan Airport across the harbor and down to the foot of her hillside, almost touching two men in a small boat, fishing. The convex edge of the rainbow was red, then yellow, and finally blue-green near the concave edge.
    Is Renfield all that’s distracting you, John?
    I looked back from the rainbow. “No. Remember H Mullen?“
    At Empire?
    “Right.“
    Sure. Is he all right?
    “Sort of.“ In a way I couldn’t do with Nancy , I caught Beth up on the case so far.
    And you smell a rat.
    “I don’t know. I can’t see Harry suckering me, but Brad Winningham was never exactly my rabbi, and Holt should have told me to hit the pike.“
    Maybe you’re looking for a reason not to take the job.
    “Because I’m still bitter over what Empire did to me?“
    A pause. And maybe over when they did it.
    I thought back to Winningham coming into my office, now Harry’s office, with the jewelry claim. Sign off or sign out. It was Christmas time, two months after a priest and I had buried Beth. My leaving the company, the boozing, a kid on a bike that I nearly turned into a hood ornament—
    John?
    “I’m okay. And you’re probably right. I’ll see you soon, huh?“
    I’ll be here.
    We laughed together as the fishermen below us upped anchor and putted off. I wondered if they could see the rainbow. Or even feel it.

    The apartment house at Number 10 Falmouth Street might still be taken for the single-family town house it probably once was, one of many in a part of the South End where the byways were named after towns on Cape Cod . From the front, the building itself was dull red brick, bowfront rather than bay windows on all three floors, trapezoid lintel blocks over each bowfront section. The front entrance was the height of a ten-step stoop above street level. The elevation of the entrance gave the basement a daylight effect, a separate smaller door leading into it. A low iron railing, painted black, enclosed the front of the house, separating it symbolically from the sidewalk. I say symbolically because there were no bars on the windows, not even across the openings at basement level.
    The South End never quite caught on during the yuppie boom. Back Bay, where I lived in the doctor’s condo, was the first to be renovated, followed by the waterfront around Faneuil Hall and then Beacon Hill below the State House. But there was always a damper on the South End. Too many drugs, too many fires, too many homeless long before they were everywhere. As a result, you had one block of rehabbed town houses straight out of Mary Poppins bordering another block of