Swan Dive

the shit out of me. And now they’re threatening Hanna and Vickie. And you know what? I can’t even get Hanna’s lawyer to return my phone calls.”
    ”John, I said I was sorry about that. Eleni...”
    I lowered my voice. ”Eleni?”
    ”It’s the MS, the sclerosis, you know? She has the good days and the bad. Lately, it’s been mostly bad.” I thought she’d sounded fine on the telephone each time, but I said, ”All right. We’ve all been under a lot of pressure here. But it’s up to you and me to cover Hanna.”
    ”You and me? What about the police?”
    ”The Boston cops are after bigger fish than Braxley. They’ve got reason to want him on the street for a while, not away in a cell somewhere. They’re playing down the killings until they make the bigger score.”
    ”Jeez, I never... what about Swampscott?”
    ”You know anybody there?”
    ”On the force, you mean?”
    ”On the force, in the politics, in the PTA, for God’s sake. Anybody who might care what Braxley would do to Hanna and Vickie.”
    Chris flinched. ”Nobody, John. I don’t really deal in those kinda circles much, you know?”
    ”Terrific.”
    ”How... how long before this Braxley stops talking and starts doing other things?”
    ”I don’t know. He’s thrown scares into a lot of people, but as far as I know, I’m the only one he’s roughed up. My guess is that he’s going to give me a little more time to try to solve things for him, but I’d hate to bet on it.”
    ”I don’t know what to tell you, John. The system, it don’t deal too well with crud like this Braxley.”
    ”Or Marsh.”
    ”Right, right. Or him too. It works pretty good ninety, ninety-five percent of the time. But something like this...”
    ”What about the courts?”
    ”Aw, John, what courts? The probate court, the family court, there’s no more husband so there’s no more divorce. Sure as hell no jurisdiction over some drug dealer from the city. Plus, like you say, he hasn’t really done anything criminal yet.”
    ”He broke into Marsh’s house, ransacked it.”
    ”Which probably wasn’t reported over there by anybody, right? Not the nurse, not Hanna, nobody.”
    ”So where does that leave us?”
    ”I don’t know. We can’t get him locked up for what he’s thinking, you know.”
    ”He said he was going to force Hanna to sell the house to cover the drugs if he didn’t get them back.”
    ”Look, John. He tells her that, she decides to sell, she sells, she gives him the money, what am I supposed to do, huh?”
    ”Oh, Chris, for chrissake, that’s duress. There’s got to be something you can do.”
    ”John, John. I gotta admit, it sounds bad to a layman like you, but she’d have to resist the sale, and then she risks Vickie getting hurt. Or she goes through with the sale and won’t give him the money. Guys like this Braxley, they got long memories, John. And even longer arms, get me?”
    ”Meaning he waits till the heat’s off, then settles things.”
    ”Right. Even if she sells and skips, guy like Braxley’s got contacts lotsa places. One of them sooner or later gets to her.”
    ”Unless the cops make their big move first.”
    ”Which you say they ain’t about to do. Think about it, John. The cops are willing to let two killings go by for a while, must be something big enough to carry another couple for the ride.”
    Which was what I’d told Holt and Dawkins myself. I wriggled in the uncomfortable old wooden chair.
    ”John, I don’t wanna seem rude or nothin’, but I really gotta—”
    ”Chris, you said you saw Paul Troller at the lawyer’s dinner the night I got hit.”
    He frowned at me. ”That’s right, I did. What’s that got to do with this here?”
    ”Troller says there was a fire. Or at least an alarm pulled. The dinner got screwed up.”
    ”So?”
    ”So why didn’t you tell me that?”
    Chris shook his head, then dipped his face once into his hands, like a bucket into a well. ”Jeez, John, I don’t know what’s the matter with you. You brought up this Troller like he coulda been the one to sap you, right?”
    ”That’s right.”
    ”Okay, so I saw him before we sat down for the dinner when it couldn’t have been him that hit you. Five, five-fifteen, something, right?”
    ”Right.”
    ”Okay, so I don’t see what the hell difference it makes whether he stayed for the dinner or not. I just didn’t think to mention it to you.”
    ”He says he did stay. He says you didn’t.”
    ”I can’t