Jeremiah Healy - Right To Die

You want milk, you're going to have male calves and you got to do something with them." He picked up the cup again. "And it seems to me that our way is the best way."

I didn't say anything as he sipped.

Cuervo blinked a few times and then said, "What outfit are you with, anyway?"

"I'm not in the veal business."

He rotated the cup in his hands. "I started to get that idea. What are you doing here?"

"I'm a private investigator from Boston."

Cuervo frowned. "What do you want from me?"

I had decided on the drive up that there was no way around telling him the truth. But maybe not all the truth. "Your stepmother, Maisy Andrus. She's been getting threats."

He laughed, shaking his head. "What's the matter, she flunk the wrong student?"

"How's that?"

"She's a teacher, right? Who's going to get mad at her except the students?"

"I don't think it's like that, Mr. Cuervo."

"Hey, call me Ray, okay?"

"Not Ramon?"

Cuervo took a big slug of coffee. "Look, I know it's not too cool to turn your back on your heritage and all, but it would be kind of tough to go through life over here as Ramon Cuervo Gallego, you know?"

"Your last name isn't Cuervo either?"

"In Spain they do names differently. My middle name comes from my father's family, the very last name, Gallego, from my mother's. So, my father was Enrique Cuervo Duran and my mother was Noeli Gallego de la Cruz, and I'm Ramon Cuervo Gallego. Understand?"

"I think so."

"Besides, I'm not exactly Spanish."

"Now I don't follow you."

"My father, the late great el Senor Doctor, had this thing about American stuff, okay? Everything from America was better: cinema, appliances, sporting arms, cars. When we went hunting, it was Remingtons all the way, and we were the only family in Candas, maybe in all of Asturias, that had a Cadillac. Yeah, he had a hell of a time getting that boat through the streets."

Cuervo made a hitchhiking gesture behind him at the photo of the house. "Even had to widen the driveway, keep from scratching the paint off. If we ever got snow – which thank Christ we never did, it's more like London weather there – he'd have wrecked it first time out, the way he drove. And when it broke? Good luck getting it fixed. But that didn't matter, right? My father wanted the best of everything, and the best was American, so I got sent off to school over here, and after my mother died he married the showiest American woman he could find."

"How old were you when your father married Maisy Andrus?"

"I don't know. I didn't even go to the wedding. What the hell does it matter?"

"Why didn't you attend the wedding?"

A smirk. "I think I had a track meet that weekend. Yeah, yeah, that was it. The team couldn't spare me."

"You get along all right with Andrus?"

"Get along? I barely ever saw her. You got to remember, I was in school over here. And Maisy went to live in Spain with my father only part of the year. I sure as hell wasn't interested in seeing Maisy over here, and I'll bet Maisy spent more time in old Esparia during those years than I did."

"You have a falling out with your father over Maisy?"

"Falling… you got a hell of a nerve, interrogating me like this."

I just waited.

"What right do you have, coming into my place of business and asking me all these questions?"

I hadn't checked in with the Sarrey police. "Only trying to do my job."

"Which is?"

"To eliminate as many people as possible from the list, and then focus on the ones who could be threatening her."

Cuervo started rotating the cup again. "Look, I don't have any bone to pick with Maisy anymore."

"Anymore?"

"My father… when he died, she got some things, I got some things."

I inclined my head toward the house photo. "She got the homestead."

"Yeah, which if she was able to use it would be a nice place. It sits on this bluff, kind of overlooking the bullring in Candas, near Gijon. When I was a kid, the family'd sit on the lawn, swilling sidra – new cider, sweet, a little alcoholic – and we'd watch the corridas – the bullfights. The bullring is built right along the beach, so when the tide goes out, they can have the corridas right there. Of course, sometimes the bulls, they notice the hole in the wall and they swim for it, but… look, what I'm trying to say here is, by the time it came to dividing things up between her and me, I did fine. I got everything I needed to come back here, go to college, buy a place on the water in Marblehead. My father was right about one thing. American is the best, and I got all I needed from him to have it."

"How did you feel about your father dying the way he did?"

"My father got sick. He was a doctor. I never thought much about him getting sick. When I was young, still living in Spain before he sent me… before I came over here for school, I thought he was like Superman, you know?"

"Invulnerable?"

"Right, right. Like God didn't let the doctors catch any diseases. That they always had to stay healthy to keep other people alive."

"And therefore?"

"When I heard about him… about him being sick, I mean, I didn't take it seriously. I couldn't even remember seeing him sick. When I finally realized how bad it was, I got upset, sure. But there wasn't anything anybody could do about it, so…" Cuervo shrugged.

"How did you feel about your stepmother helping him'?"

A quick breath, then he leaned back in the chair and got casual. "I don't think Maisy is my stepmother anymore. I mean, she got to be that because she married my father, but now she's married to somebody else, right?"

"Andrus injected your father with an overdose."

A philosophical smile. "Maybe what she did was the right thing. He was going to die anyway. Maybe Maisy was just making it easier for him, like we do with the stunner on the calves downstairs before they can see the knife."

"You get involved in any of the legal wrangle over your father's death?"

"No. Maisy got charged and I was supposed to testify, but they never – what do you call it?"

"Indicted her?"

"No, like when they… extradited her. They never extradited Maisy. This was all after Loredo Mendez – the prosecutor that let her get off to start with – killed himself. Barely remember old Luis now, but he was a friend of my father's from the university and had this young wife my father saved from dying during childbirth." The smirk again. "Younger wives were real popular in my father's crowd."

"You ever go back to Spain?"

"Me? No way. That's a part of the world I've already seen."

"Never get homesick?"

"For what? Candas hasn't been home since I was fourteen."

"What can you tell me about Manolo?"

"Manolo. He still around?"

"Yes."

"Well, I guess he would be. My father was a soft touch, John, a real soft touch. One day he comes home, I'm maybe eight or nine, and he's got this big, scared kid with him. Manolo's family was kind of poor, and his father was a drunk. You don't see much of that in Spain. The people learn to drink sidra and sherry young enough to handle it. But Manolo's father was the exception, and with Manolo not being able to talk or anything, I guess it got him frustrated, so he beat the kid. But el Sefzor Doctor took him in. Taught him sign language and turned him into a helper around the dispensary. Kind of a trained bear, if you ask me. But he was like my father's shadow. Wherever el Senor Doctor Enrique went, Manolo would be there too."

"How did Manolo take your father's death?"

"I wasn't paying much attention. But I'm guessing that my father must have made him understand that it was okay."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because I know Manolo. If he thought Maisy had killed my father? Hah, he'd kill her. No question. But then, Manolo's not your man."