Mating Season Read online

  “If she liked it so much,” Coffin said, “why just once in a while?”

  “She was pretty busy,” Cavalo said. “With other men, I mean. She kind of slept around, I guess you could say.”

  “Did that bother you?” Coffin said.

  “Nah. I liked Kenji and all, but I’m really more into guys.”

  “When was the last time you saw Ms. Sole alive?” Coffin said.

  “Day before yesterday, I think,” Cavalo said. “I stopped by on my way into town. I had a DVD I wanted to give her.”

  “She liked movies?” Lola said.

  Cavalo laughed. “She loved movies. She collected them. She wrote about film, you know, for a living.”

  “What,” Coffin said, “like a critic?”

  “Academic,” Cavalo said. “She’s written a couple of books on film theory, and she taught at BU, part-time.”

  “What kind of films?” Lola said.

  Cavalo bit his lip. “Mostly adult.”

  “Adult?” Lola said. “As in porn?”

  “Right. She was interested in porn from a cultural studies perspective. She wrote her dissertation on it.”

  “Cultural studies,” Coffin said.

  “You made porn, she studied it,” Lola said, tapping her pen on her notebook. “Funny how that worked out.”

  “We had that connection, yeah,” Cavalo said.

  Coffin scratched his earlobe. “Hundreds of DVDs? I didn’t see any DVDs in there.”

  “You must have missed the screening room,” Cavalo said. “It’s downstairs, off the living room. If you didn’t know it was there, you’d think it was a broom closet. It’s got the big-screen HDTV, surround sound and everything.”

  Coffin looked at Lola. “Surround sound and everything,” he said.

  “Some house,” Lola said. “For an academic.”

  Cavalo lowered his voice. “Trust fund,” he said. “From her grandfather. He was, like, stinkin’ rich. Left her millions. If she wanted it, she could buy it.” He pointed at the floor, the garage below it. “Range Rover for winter, Porsche convertible for summer. She also owns a boat, but I think it’s being repaired. And an apartment in the West Village. And a place in Key West.”

  “Any other family that you know of?” Coffin asked. “Parents still alive? Siblings?”

  Cavalo frowned. “No siblings. Mother’s dead, but her father’s still very much alive.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Coffin said.

  “Her father is J. Hedrick Sole—he’s about eighty and maybe a little bit senile. Senior partner at a big Boston law firm, Scrooby, Sammitch, and Sole. Semiretired now. Very rich and very . . . difficult. He and Kenji had a complicated relationship.”

  Lola wrote in her notebook. “How so?” she said.

  “J. Hedrick has a girlfriend. She’s young enough to be his granddaughter—twenty-five, maybe. She’s costing him a fortune. Fancy condo, fancy car, jewelry, clothes, use of a private jet, the whole enchilada. Kenji hired a private eye to have her checked out.”

  “Let me guess,” Coffin said. “She’s a hooker.”

  “Nah,” Cavalo said, grinning. “It’s better than that. She’s a performance artist.”

  Cavalo’s teeth were perfectly white and perfectly straight. Dentures? Coffin wondered. Then he thought, Veneers, maybe. Everybody’s got veneers these days.

  “Uh-oh,” Lola said.

  Cavalo nodded. “She’s all about shock on a grand scale: lots of very public nudity, even public sex. Her last performance was in the middle of Vatican Square, if you can believe that, with a bunch of guys dressed up like nuns. She almost started a riot. She has a full camera crew to document her performances, and a fancy lawyer on call for when she gets arrested.”

  “And Kenji didn’t think she was a suitable companion for good old Dad,” Coffin said. He squinted out at the harbor, which was just visible through the screen of trees.

  “Kenji hated her—thought she was a gold digger and a fraud. She was very upset.”

  “Daddy was squandering the inheritance,” Coffin said.

  “Exactly. Last time we talked about it she was looking into having him declared incompetent. She wanted power of attorney.”

  “What were you doing last night?” Lola said. “After six, say?”

  “I was out. Went to the A-House until closing, then to an after hours party until around 5:00 A.M. Then I came home and went straight to bed.”

  “You didn’t see or hear anything unusual before you went out, or when you came home?”

  “No. Except that a lot of Kenji’s lights were still on.”

  “Was that unusual?”

  “Enough that I noticed it, I guess.”

  “Any idea who might have killed her?”

  “No.”

  “Any idea why they might have searched the place?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  Coffin smoothed his mustache. “What was the DVD?”

  Cavalo looked confused.

  “The one you gave her the day before yesterday,” Coffin said. “What was it?”

  “It was a porn thing,” Cavalo said, blushing a little. “One of mine.”

  “One of yours?” Lola asked. “You mean, one from your collection?”

  “No,” Cavalo said. “I mean one I’m in. That’s what I do for a living. I’m a porn actor.” He stood up, crossed the room, and took a DVD from a small wooden rack next to the TV. “Here. This is the one. Hot off the presses.” He handed it to Coffin.

  The DVD was called Daddy Knows Best, and Cavalo’s picture was on the cover. He was wearing nothing but motorcycle boots, a leather cap, and a pair of black leather chaps.

  Coffin frowned. “You’re worried about people coming after you and you’re a porn actor?” he said. “You think that’s a good idea?”

  “I’m doing gay stuff now,” Cavalo said. “Two different worlds. Plus, I had some work done. I don’t look the same.”

  “What kind of work?” Coffin said.

  “Eyes, chin, nose, teeth, tattoo removal, the works,” Cavalo said. “I even had my cock enlarged. Not that it needed it.”

  Coffin looked at Lola. “Not that it needed it,” he said.

  “What makes a guy get a penis enlargement?” Lola said, looking at the cover of the DVD Cavalo had given them. They were standing at the bottom of the carriage house stairs. “Insecurity? Is that it?”

  “Vanity,” Coffin said. “Ego. At least in Bobby’s case.”

  “Still,” Lola said, peering a bit more closely at the picture, “it is impressive. In a freakish kind of way. Bobby may not be the brightest bulb on the tree, but I can see why Kenji might have been interested.”

  “Interesting piercing,” Coffin said.

  “Wouldn’t that hurt?” Lola said. “Like, a lot?”

  “Colt Masters,” Coffin said, flipping the box over, reading the back cover. “That’s his porn name.”

  “It’s got a nice ring to it,” Lola said.

  Coffin looked at her. “Ouch,” he said.

  Tony was leaning against his cruiser, eating something. Coffin waved him over.

  “We have to go back inside for a minute or two,” Coffin said. “If Mancini shows up, try to stall him.”

  “Will do,” Tony said, taking a bite from a large, dripping sandwich. “How?”

  “You’ll think of something,” Coffin said. “What are you eating?”

  “Hoagie,” Tony said, mouth full. He held the sandwich under Coffin’s nose. “Want a bite?”

  Coffin turned and walked toward the house. His left ear started buzzing again. His legs felt several inches too long. “What I want,” he said, “is to get through the day without fainting or throwing up.”

  “I dated a performance artist a few times,” Lola said.

  The screening room was down a short flight of stairs from the kitchen, tucked in next to the storage/furnace room in Kenji Sole’s basement. Coffin pushed the door open.

  “She was de
veloping this piece where she’d take off all her clothes, smear herself with shit—except it was really chocolate syrup—and recite the Pledge of Allegiance backwards. Then she’d invite members of the audience to come onstage and lick the chocolate syrup off.”

  “Genius,” Coffin said.

  Lola ducked her head, embarrassed. “It was supposed to be a statement about how society silences women by brainwashing them with jingoistic slogans. I forget how the chocolate syrup fit in.”

  There were no windows in the screening room; it felt airless and claustrophobic compared to the light and space of the rest of the house, and was barely big enough for its wet bar, L-shaped leather sofa, huge, wall-mounted flat-screen TV, and built-in floor-to-ceiling media shelving. Hundreds—maybe thousands—of DVDs had been stuffed into every available inch of shelf space.

  “Wow,” Lola said, pulling on a latex glove. “Cavalo wasn’t kidding.” She slid a DVD from one of the shelves. “Moulin Splooge.”

  Coffin looked over her shoulder. “May the Foreskin Be with You,” he said. “Look, here’s a clever one—Anal-ize This!”

  Lola curled her lip. “Ew,” she said.

  “There’s some gay stuff here, too,” Coffin said. “Sailor Studs; Bad Boy Bikers.”

  Lola squinted at Coffin. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “That maybe Ms. Sole had a more than purely academic interest in the subject matter?”

  “You have to wonder when people say they’re studying porn . . .”

  “Why not Tolstoy? Or the lives of the razor clams?”

  “It’s kind of the Pete Townshend excuse,” Lola said, “but what do I know?”

  Coffin shrugged. “Exactly,” he said. “We’re just a couple of bourgeois ignoramuses. Not PhDs.”

  “Or psychiatrists,” Lola said.

  It was unnerving, Coffin thought, standing in that room, surrounded by all those DVDs with their stored memories of ritualized passion, or the banal stuff that passed for it in the porn industry, all those hundreds of men and women or men and men or women and women (or, or, or), variously coupled and conjoined, penetrating or being penetrated in all the standard ways—and others not so standard—scene after scene stored on plastic forever, the actors and actresses eternally young, eternally entwined. It was, Coffin thought, a strange electronic hell to end up in.

  “Voyeurism,” Coffin said. “On a grand scale.”

  Lola nodded. “It doesn’t get any grander,” she said.

  “Unusual in a woman, isn’t it?”

  Lola thought for a second. “I guess so,” she said. “I mean, most porn is made for guys, right? Gay or straight, still guys.”

  “What about romance novels?” Coffin said. “Bodice-rippers, or whatever they’re called. Aren’t they porn for women?”

  “It’s not the same,” Lola said.

  “Why is it different?” Coffin said. “Porn is porn, right?”

  “Verbal versus visual,” Lola said. “You guys are all eyes and no imagination.”

  Coffin sat on the sofa and rubbed his chin. He’d missed a spot shaving; the whiskers were spiky and thick. “So what’s the scenario? Rape, murder, robbery?”

  “Sure,” Lola said. “Makes sense, right?”

  “I don’t know—it feels wrong.” Coffin shook his head. “I don’t see it as a rape thing.”

  “The nightgown,” Lola said. “You don’t wear a white lace baby-doll unless you’re with someone. It’s a nightie of consent.”

  “He could have forced her to wear it,” Coffin said.

  “I guess so,” Lola said. “Seems like a bit of a stretch, though, you’re right.”

  “So if it’s not rape, then what?”

  “Well,” Lola said, frowning. “Maybe they’re going to have sex, get into a fight instead, then he kills her and robs the place.”

  “Maybe,” said Coffin. “Maybe she has something he wants, he sleeps with her thinking maybe he can get it out of her, she won’t give it up, he kills her and takes whatever it is.”

  Lola sat next to Coffin, her knee briefly touching his. “Maybe it’s not the same person,” she said. “Maybe person one has sex with her, kills her, and runs off. Person two knocks on the door, nobody answers, she’s lying dead on the Persian rug, they step over the body and start looking for cash and jewelry.”

  “And computers,” Coffin said. “So she’s dead before they rob the place?”

  Lola nodded. “Had to be before.”

  “Unless she came home, caught them in the act—”

  “Took off all her clothes and put on a see-through nightie while threatening to call the cops—”

  “Maybe she and the killer are having sex,” Coffin said. “They have a fight—he trashes the place, she tries to stop him, and he stabs her.”

  “Maybe she trashes the place, strips, puts on the nightie and stabs herself. Five or six times. With an eight-inch chef’s knife.”

  Coffin laughed, a short, sharp bark. They sat silently for another minute, looking at the floor-to-ceiling shelves full of porn.

  “Curious about her film theory books?” Lola asked.

  “Gack,” Coffin said. “Not so much. Ever read any theory?”

  “A little, in college. Everything’s a text. You’re a text, I’m a text, your car’s a text. Beyond that I couldn’t make heads nor tales of it.”

  “Nobody can,” Coffin said. “That’s the whole point.”

  Outside, Tony had wrapped most of the driveway in yellow crime scene tape, entirely closing off the entrance. Mancini and the two state police detectives were standing next to a big Lexus sedan as it idled in the street.

  “Coffin!” Mancini waved Coffin over. “Tell your idiot cousin to clear this tape away, before I cut it down myself.”

  Coffin tapped his watch. “What kept you guys? Stop off for a clam roll in Eastham?” He looked at Tony, who had a long strip of crime scene tape stuck to his shoe. “Are you done?” he said.

  “Not really,” Tony said, “but I ran out of tape.”

  Coffin took a cigarette out of the pack in Tony’s shirt pocket and stuck it into his mouth. “Maybe you should cut some of this down so Mr. Mancini and his friends can pull into the driveway.”

  “Thought you quit,” Tony said, lighting Coffin’s cigarette with a match.

  Coffin blew smoke out of his nose. “I did,” he said.

  “Where’s Chief Boyle?” Mancini asked, after he’d gone through the house. The two state police detectives were standing on the downstairs deck, waiting for the Crime Scene Services team to drive up from New Bedford in their shiny white van.

  “He’s an administrator,” Coffin said. “He doesn’t do actual crime.”

  “Lucky him,” Mancini said.

  He was wearing his Provincetown outfit, Coffin thought: perfectly pressed jeans, a black polo shirt buttoned all the way up, and sunglasses with blue oval lenses. His hair was gelled into a self-conscious rumple.

  “Oh, come on,” Coffin said. “You love a good, high-profile murder. Admit it. Nothing keeps your office in the public eye like a celebrity homicide.”

  The left side of Mancini’s mouth turned upward a quarter of an inch. “No comment,” he said. “What about you? How are the panic attacks? Any twinges in there?”

  “One or two,” Coffin said. “Thanks for asking.”

  “Well, I’m not just being nice,” Mancini said.

  “Ah,” Coffin said.

  Mancini looked at Coffin through his blue lenses. “What I’m trying to say is, are you up to assisting in this investigation? Officially?”

  “Well,” said Coffin. “This is unexpected. It’s like the captain of the football team asking little old me to the prom.”

  Mancini shrugged. “Be a smart-ass, Coffin, if it makes you feel better. You don’t like me, I don’t like you, but you know the lay of the land up here, and that’s useful to me. I owe it to the people of the Commonwealth of—”

  “If I’m on the investigation
officially,” Coffin said, “you’ve covered your ass three hundred and sixty degrees. Case solved, you get credit for being smart enough to bring us in. Not solved, you blame the incompetent locals. That about right?”

  Mancini lowered his voice. “I made a mistake last time, okay? What do you want from me—a written apology?”

  “Last time,” Coffin said, “we all made our share of mistakes. Except Sergeant Winters.”

  Lola was standing nearby, talking to one of Kenji Sole’s neighbors—a very tall woman with thick legs and a big yellow hat.

  Mancini pursed his lips. “Ah yes. The lovely and talented Sergeant Winters. Too bad she doesn’t like boys.”

  “Too bad for who?” Coffin said.

  “Come on, Coffin,” Mancini said. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t like a piece of that.”

  Lola’s hair was dark blond, pulled back in a short ponytail that swung below the band of her uniform hat. She stood five feet ten inches tall and looked slimmer than her 155 pounds. Coffin liked her a great deal. It had been less than two years since she had saved his life.

  “Don’t worry,” Coffin said. “I don’t think you’re gay.” Mancini grinned.

  “If I’m in,” Coffin said, “Lola’s in, too.”

  “What,” Mancini said, “afraid you’ll end up in the drink again?”

  “You never know,” Coffin said.

  “I’ll talk to Boyle,” Mancini said.

  In the carriage house apartment, Bobby Cavalo stood by the window, watching the Crime Scene Services team unload equipment from their white van. He held a small black cell phone to his ear. The signal was terrible.

  “I told you,” he said. “It’s gone. Whoever killed her must have taken it. All the DVDs, too.”

  A blast of static came from the cell phone. Cavalo could barely hear the voice on the other end.

  “It. The computer,” he said. “What else?”

  There was another rush of static, a voice buried inside it.

  “TV star?” Cavalo said. “What do you mean, did I find the TV star?”

  “Not ‘TV star,’ you idiot,” the voice said. “DVR. Did you find the fucking DVR?”

  “DVR? You mean like a TiVo? I didn’t see anything like that.”