Vulgar Boatman (18 page)

“How do you know?”

“He took out this one paper and he kinda studied it. And then he looked at me and said, ‘bull’s-eye.’”

“He said ‘bull’s-eye’?”

“Yes. I figure that means he got what he was after. So he thanked me and drove away. Then, like the next day, I find out he was killed. And it happened at your house, right?”

I nodded. “Right.”

“Well, I started thinking it had something to do with that file. I mean, I don’t know, but the timing of it—you understand? It’s very confusing to me.”

“I understand,” I said.

“But the thing was, I was so scared. I mean, not just that I stole the file. That was bad enough if I got caught. But somebody killed Buddy, and somebody killed Alice, and they were like my best friends, and that is really scary. Then I saw the paper today, and I remembered you at school, and I figured you were the same person, Buddy’s lawyer, and I know how lawyers are supposed to, you know…”

“Client privilege, you mean,” I said.

“Yes. That’s it.”

“Of course, technically, Christie, you’re not my client.”

She frowned. “Oh, jeez…”

“And,” I continued, “as an officer of the court, it’s my duty to report anything I learn about a murder case to the authorities.”

“But you can’t. That’s not fair.”

“Unless, of course, you had retained me.”

“But…”

“Do you want to retain Brady?” said Sylvie.

“I’m not sure…”

“Hire him,” said Sylvie gently. “Do you want him to be your lawyer?”

She nodded. “Well, yeah.” She looked from Sylvie to me. “I mean, I didn’t think I had to hire you or anything. I figured I could talk to you.” Tears brimmed her eyes. “Oh, shit. I can’t afford a lawyer. My parents would…”

“You don’t have to pay me,” I said. I ripped a page from the pocket-sized notebook I carried in my jacket. I pushed it across the table to her, along with a ball-point pen. “Just write on it that you are retaining Brady Coyne as your attorney, sign your name, and write the date.”

“That’s all? I don’t have to pay you?”

“That’s all,” I said.

She hunched over the paper and frowned in concentration as she wrote. Then she handed me the paper and the pen. She had written: “I retane Brady Coyne as my lawyer.” It was close enough.

“Now,” I said, pocketing the slip of paper, “you are my client. You have just retained me. That means that I must protect you. I cannot tell anybody else what you tell me. You can tell me anything at all. You are a privileged client.”

She smiled. I realized she hadn’t really smiled since I had met her. She had a lovely smile. “Well, that’s cool,” she said.

I touched her hand. “Having said that,” I said, “I have to say this now. We probably should tell the police.”

She frowned. “But you just said—”

“Right. I am advising you, now.”

“I thought I could trust you.”

“Christie,” I said. “Listen. There are two murders involved here. You wouldn’t want to hinder the police, would you? You want them to get whoever killed Alice and Buddy, don’t you?”

She was shaking her head. “I told you what I know. Now you want me to get in trouble.”

“Listen to Brady, dear,” said Sylvie.

“I shouldn’ta come here,” she muttered. “My father was right.”

“Your father?”

“He always says, you do what’s right, and let other people worry about themselves. Mind your own business and you’ll get along fine. I shouldn’ta taken the file and I shouldn’ta told you.”

Tears began to overflow her eyes. I’m a sucker for any female who cries. I reached across the table and put my hand on her wrist. “I probably wouldn’t have to tell all of this to the police. They won’t be interested in the fact that you took the file.”

Christie snuffled and looked up at me. “Really?”

I nodded. “But you should understand that sometimes doing what’s right means you can’t mind your own business. Sometimes you have to pay a price to do what’s right. I think you know what’s right. Taking that file, that was something you did for a friend. For a good reason. Nobody can get too upset about that. Not under these circumstances. It’s not really the same as stealing. Especially if telling me about it helps to solve the case.”

“Will it, do you think?” Her eyes were wide with hope. “Solve the case, I mean?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Do you have to tell the cops?”

“I don’t know that either. Let me ask you a different question. Okay?”

She wiped her nose on her sleeve. “Okay.”

“Try to think. See if you can remember what it was that Buddy pulled out of that file. When he said ‘bull’s-eye.’ ”

She squinted, as if the unfocused picture was in front of her. Then she shrugged. “It was on computer paper, that’s all I can say. That wide kind with the green-and-white stripes.”

“Did it remind you of any kind of document you’re familiar with?”

“Oh, jeez, they print everything on that stuff. Letters, report cards, progress reports.”

“So you have no idea.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Coyne. No idea.”

I picked up my coffee cup. My coffee was cold. Then I felt Sylvie’s hand creep onto my thigh, where she began scratching gently with one long fingernail. I glanced at my watch. Christie sucked on her straw until it made gurgling noises in the bottom of the glass. I said, “Christie, you did the right thing, calling me and telling me all of this. And don’t worry. I will protect your confidentiality. I’ll keep your name out of it. Okay?”

She smiled and nodded.

“The other thing is, I don’t want you telling anybody else about it. Nobody. Not even your best friend.”

“My best friend was Alice,” she said softly.

I picked up the damp check the boy had left by my elbow. “Right now,” I said to Christie, “Miss Szabo and I have an appointment.”

The three of us walked out to the parking lot together. Christie climbed into a late-model Chrysler—Daddy’s car, I assumed. He probably figured that his Christie was at the library searching for old books on the Civil War, instead of meeting strange attorneys at ice cream parlors.

Sylvie and I cut through the back roads, heading for Gert’s, where the monkfish would be off today’s boat, the vegetables fresh from local gardens, and the breads baked that afternoon. If Gert’s were located in the city, and if it were discovered by the Beacon Hill crowd, you’d have to call a week in advance for reservations, and even then, you’d only get a table if you held office or if Gert knew you.

But Gert’s is situated on Route 127 outside of Gloucester. It hasn’t been discovered yet, though I fear its days are numbered. It’s a simple, square, weathered building. The sign outside says only, “Good Food,” which, for those of us who know better, is like saying Shakespeare wrote good sonnets. Gert’s features red-and-white checked oilcloth tablecloths, cloth napkins the size of bath towels, candles in old Chianti bottles, fishing nets and lobster buoys hung from the knotty pine walls, and a view of thick woods beyond the parking lot and the big dumpster out back.

The waitresses are all local girls. They sweat a lot.

The music that drifts over the good speaker system is all Italian. It ranges from Verdi to Julius La Rosa.

People go to Gert’s for the food. I know no one who has ever been disappointed.

I feel about Gert’s the same way I feel about a certain trout stream in north-central Vermont. I only tell my closest friends about the place.

Sylvie and I shared a bowl mounded high with steamed mussels reeking of garlic and butter, which we washed down with several glasses of the dusty house white. Then came the monkfish, an exquisite white-fleshed fish, delicate almost—but not quite—to the point of blandness. Gert seasoned it with a little lemon juice and freshly cracked black peppercorns.

Sylvie and I ate earnestly. It was one of the things I loved about Sylvie. She knows when to eat and when to talk and when to make love, and she knows when not to mix up her priorities among them.

It was a little after ten when we left Gert’s. As we crossed the parking lot heading for my car, Sylvie put her arm around my waist and leaned her head against my shoulder. Our hips bumped awkwardly as we walked. “I’m really tired,” she mumbled.

“I’ll take you right home and tuck you in.”

“That’s not what I had in mind.”

“My house, then.”

She chuckled deep in her throat. It reminded me of what she was wearing.

I couldn’t wait to get my hands on her.

She dozed in the car. I played a Benny Goodman tape, happy that his music was outliving him. An hour later I pulled into my spot in the parking garage in the bowels of my apartment building.

In the elevator on the way up, apparently refreshed by her nap, Sylvie leaned against me, her mouth lifted, her eyes half shut. It was a long kiss, the full six floors, and it was accompanied by some preliminary groping and stroking, and we didn’t break it off until the elevator door slid open.

We walked over to my door. Sylvie hung on to my arm while I patted my pockets for the key. “Want me to help look?” she said, slithering her hand into my pocket.

“Jesus, cut it out,” I said.

I found the key, unlocked the door, and Sylvie and I stepped inside. I found the light switch and flicked it on.

“Welcome home,” said a voice.

He was a jowly guy. He was wearing a rumpled suit, and he was sitting at my kitchen table. He held up both hands, like a priest blessing his congregation. “Come on in. Make yourselves comfortable.”

“Yeah. Get over there and siddown.” This was a different voice, and it came from behind us.

I pivoted around to look. A tall, gaunt man wearing a dark windbreaker stood inside the doorway. He kicked the door shut behind us, his eyes never leaving me and Sylvie.

He held a very large automatic pistol in his hand. It was aimed at my sternum.

“W
HO THE HELL ARE
you?” I said to the fat guy at the table.

He had squinty, pig eyes, and when he smiled his cheeks bunched up and almost obscured them completely. “Mr. Curry, sir,” he replied. The last word was a genuine Southern “suh.” He gave a courtly dip of his head. “And this gentleman is Mr. Baron.”

“Mr. Baron,” the gaunt guy with the gun, grinned wolfishly at their joke. Then he waved at me and Sylvie with his gun. “G’wan,” he grunted. “Get over there.”

Sylvie and I moved toward the table where “Mr. Curry” was seated. He pushed himself out of his chair and held it, gesturing with a sweep of his hand that Sylvie should sit there. She looked at me. I nodded. She sat down. The thin man, “Mr. Baron,” poked me again, and I sat at the table across from Sylvie.

“How’d you get into my apartment?” I said.

“Your young friend was kind enough to let us borrow his key,” said “Mr. Curry.”

“Buddy.”

“A very courageous young man,” said the fat man.

“Did you have to kill him?”

“An unfortunate accident, sir. Unfortunate in several respects. Unfortunate, of course, for poor young Mr. Baron. Also unfortunate for this Mr. Baron here, and for me. Because the young gentleman failed to disclose the information we sought from him. He had the lack of consideration to die too quickly.”

I nodded. Sylvie was staring wide-eyed at me. “These are the men who killed Buddy Baron,” I told her. “Their names aren’t really Baron and Curry. They think it’s a joke.”

“Oh, it is,” said Mr. Curry, puffing his cheeks again. “It’s a good joke.” He was standing at one side of the table, both hands flat upon it, leaning forward so he could talk confidentially with us. Mr. Baron was leaning against the kitchen sink across the room, one ankle crossed over the other. He kept his gun pointed at me.

Mr. Curry turned to Sylvie. “You’re a pretty one,” he said. “Stand up, sweetheart.”

Sylvie frowned at him and didn’t move.

“Come on, darlin’,” he said. “Lemme have a look at you, like a good girl.”

“Leave her alone,” I said. “She’s got nothing to do with any of this.”

Mr. Curry whirled to face me. His pale pig eyes glittered. “You shut the fuck up, friend. I’m getting to you.”

“Oh, dear,” I said, fluttering my eyelids. “The mean man is threatening me.”

Mr. Curry twitched his head at Mr. Baron, who slowly unlimbered himself and ambled across the kitchen toward me until he was standing beside my right shoulder. “Hey,” he whispered. “Hey, asshole.”

“Up yours,” I said wearily, without turning around.

Mr. Curry grabbed a handful of Sylvie’s blond hair and gave it a sudden yank. Her head snapped backwards. She started to say something, but the words were choked as her throat was constricted by the motion.

I instinctively put my hands on the table and began to push myself up when Mr. Baron hit me with his gun barrel. He did it casually, the way one might swipe at a pesky housefly, and he caught me across the bridge of my nose. I saw a white flash of pain, and I heard the familiar crunch that meant another broken nose. It’s the sound you hear when you step on a pavement littered with acorns, and you’d swear it’s just as loud. But in fact, it’s a noise heard only inside your own head.

“Aw, shit,” I said. Tears were running down my cheeks, mingling with the blood from the gash across my nose and all the ruptured blood vessels inside.

Mr. Curry had hoisted Sylvie out of her chair, and he held her pressed backwards against his fat body, one wrist against her throat, the other arm across her chest. Sylvie was looking at me. There was no fear in her expression.

“Brady,” she said.

“I’m okay,” I told her. To the fat guy, I said, “Why don’t you let her go?”

“Because, sir, we need something from you, and we are perfectly willing to do whatever needs to be done to get it. And I am not sure you believe that quite yet. Now do you understand?”

“What do you want?”

“Why, sir, I believe you know that. I surely do.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Mr. Curry moved his hand so that it cupped Sylvie’s breast. She tried to move her mouth to bite the wrist that was levered against her throat. He increased the pressure, and Sylvie made a gagging sound. Suddenly Mr. Curry squeezed her breast. I could see his fingers dig in cruelly. Sylvie’s scream was pure pain. I instinctively started up from my chair. Mr. Baron whacked the side of my neck with his gun, and for an instant my entire left arm went numb. I slumped back into my chair.