Invasion of Privacy - Jeremiah Healy by Jeremiah Healy Read Free Book Online Page A

practice their manhood on girls
like the pair back at The Tides. Following the road left and over the
bridge, I wasn't sorry to see the gore fade in the rearview mirror.
    The macadam rose to climb a bowl-like hill, and I
entered Plymouth Willows from what was functionally its back door,
near the tennis courts (nets up) and pool (water drained). The hill
I'd climbed provided a postcard backdrop to the complex, the trees
mostly hardwoods, here and there a pine or two. A small prefab house
sat between the courts and the pool, but otherwise Plymouth Willows
seemed to be laid out like a giant shamrock. The roads were looping
cul-de-sacs with clusters of townhouse units distributed around each
leaf of the shamrock. I counted four townhouses per cluster, four
clusters per leaf. Symmetry u ber alles .
    The architecture was all gray, weathered shingles,
striving also for that Nantucket motif. The only variations were the
color of the doors and window trim, which went from red to yellow to
blue to white, depending on which cluster in the leaf you were
passing. I drove around all the cul-de-sacs, spotting the address
Olga Evorova had given me in one of the yellow-trimmed clusters with
a nice view of the opposite hillside. There were only a few
ornamental willows on the grounds, but everything looked well kept,
shrubbery trimmed and grass mowed. While I realized Hendrix
Management should most likely be thanked for that, what struck me was
how few of the units seemed to be occupied. There were no garages,
yet only a handful of cars. Most people might be at work, but many
windows had no drapes or curtains in them. And no FOR SALE signs on
the front lawns, either.
    Then, driving back toward unit number 42, I caught a
break.
    A man came out the townhouse's front door, juggling a
box and some paperwork as he pulled the knob closed behind him. He
roughly tit the description my client had given me, and the burden of
the box and paperwork slowed his walk down the path to a crawl.
    Pulling over and reaching under the newspaper on the
passenger's seat, I retrieved my camera. I'm not a terrific
photographer, and the man I took for Andrew Dees was some distance
away, but with a Pentax K-frame long lens I can do simple, candid
stuff well enough. I rolled down my window, the air much warmer again
now that I was a few miles from the ocean.
    Dees showed clearly through the viewfinder: dark hair
and prominent brow, straight nose and strong chin. I snapped off
three head-and-shoulders portraits before he reached his car, a brown
Toyota Corolla hatchback. Dees lifted the hatch, dropping the box and
paperwork inside, then closed it and walked to the driver's door. He
turned once in my direction, and I got a fourth shot of him before he
climbed behind the wheel and drove off toward the front of the
complex.
    I was leaning down to slide the camera back under the
newspaper when a male voice next to my window said, "You like to
take pixtures?"
    If the voice had been normal, I probably would have
jumped. But it was squeaky and shy, and somehow it didn't startle me,
despite being so close by. I looked up into the sort of face we'd
have casually called "retarded" when I was growing up, the
compressed features and crimped ears and hanging jaw of a Down's
syndrome child.
    Only the person standing next to my door wasn't a
child. At least thirty, on a stumpy frame of five-six or so, he had a
few strands of gray in the brown hair that lay flat along the ears. I
couldn't see the rest of his hair because he wore a red, white, and
blue New England Patriots ballcap down tight, almost to the eyebrows.
The rest of his outfit was a one-piece maintenance jumpsuit in faded
green, the name "PAULIE" stitched in yellow thread over the
left top pocket. He had a rake in his hands, and I realized he was
gripping the handle tightly, nervously.
    "Well, do you?"
    I said, "Do I like to take pictures?"
    A blink and a nod.
    "Yes, I do."
    "Me too."
    "Paulie?"
    "That's me." He let go of the