Vulgar Boatman (27 page)

“Play dead, huh?”

“Right. Play dead,” he said.

When I hung up, Mary came back into the room. She looked at me out of the corner of her eye, and I knew she had been listening.

“Mary Watson,” I said, making my voice gruff and stern.

She turned around with a wide-eyed innocent look. “Yes, Brady? What can I get you?”

I laughed. “Do you mind if I take a hot shower while I’m waiting for Tom?”

“Lord, no.” She sounded relieved. “Come on. Follow me.”

She led me upstairs, put out a big bath towel and razor, and showed me how to adjust the temperature of the water. I took my time at it, letting the heat and the steam soak deep into my flesh, and when I finished I dried myself and got dressed. I felt nearly normal. Tired, but that healthy tired that comes from good exercise.

A nap would have been perfect.

When I returned downstairs, Tom Baron was sitting with Mary Watson in the kitchen. They were sipping coffee and Mary was telling Tom how her Peter, at the age of seventy-eight, had gotten himself a widow lady, a mere girlchild of sixty-three and how about once a month he forgot to come home on time and Mary would lock him out of the house, and he’d stand on the lawn and cry and promise to be good until she let him in. Which, she was saying cheerfully, she always did, because he was losing some of his marbles and couldn’t be held strictly accountable for his behavior.

He had, she said, become a horny old goat. She figured that his inhibitions were disappearing along with his memory. If he wanted to run around with that fat widow, it was no skin off her nose, one way or the other, she said.

She managed to get what she needed out of him anyway, Mary told Tom with a girlish giggle.

Tom Baron, I was forced to admit, had a way with people. Got them to tell him the damnedest things. My feelings were a little hurt that Mary had not chosen to confide in me.

I stood there, shifting my weight from one leg to the other. Tom barely glanced at me. Mary was talking a mile a minute. They both treated her tale as if it were utterly fascinating.

To Mary, at least, I supposed it was.

When she finally wound down, Tom stood politely. “I suppose I should rid you of this man,” he said, jerking his head at me.

She smiled. “Oh, he’s a nice enough man, even if he runs around without any pants on.”

I thanked her profusely and promised to return Peter’s clothes.

“Keep them. He won’t know the difference,” she said.

I tried to pay for the phone calls. She refused that, too. “It’s been an adventure, Brady Coyne. I can’t wait to tell Peter what he missed.”

Tom and I went to his car. After we got started up, he said, “Now, for Christ’s sake, will you tell me what happened?”

I
T TOOK ABOUT HALF
an hour to drive from Mary Watson’s place in Hampton, New Hampshire, to Windsor Harbor, Massachusetts. Just long enough for me to tell Tom the entire story.

He didn’t interrupt me, even when I explained Buddy’s part in it. When I finished, he was silent for a long time. Then he said in a soft voice, “Harry Cusick. How do you figure it?”

“Who knows?” I answered. “Greed, probably. Or jealousy, or love, or revenge. Pick your motive. You know him better than me.”

Tom laughed sourly. “I thought I knew a lot of people. The thing about Cusick that gets me is this: I always thought he was
too
good a cop. A tough nut who took no shit from anybody. I couldn’t budge him with Buddy.”

“Everybody’s got their price, Tom.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m learning that. I’m learning that about myself, even. It’s a hard lesson.”

Later, while he and Joanie and I were sprawled in his living room drinking coffee, Tom said, “I’m going to cancel out tonight. Supposed to be going to Taunton. Got a feeling that what’s happening around here may be more important.”

We had lunch. Tom and Joanie took a walk down along the beach. I opted to stick close to the phone. I ended up on the sofa in their living room.

I woke up when they came back in, rubbing their arms and stomping their feet. “Cold,” said Joanie. “Winter’s coming.”

“So’s the election,” said Tom. “Thank God.”

Around three in the afternoon Eddy Curry came by. Tom told him to call whomever he had to call to beg off the Taunton appearance. Curry began to argue, but Tom cut him off. So Curry shrugged and went to the phone in the den. He came back a few minutes later. “They don’t like it,” he said. “A state senator was going to be there. He wanted to be seen with you.”

“He’s probably better off,” said Tom.

“He may well be, at that.” Curry nodded.

A state police cruiser pulled into the driveway around five. Joanie got the door, and she came back a minute later leading Horowitz. He nodded to me, and I introduced him to Tom and Curry. They shook hands.

Joanie offered us drinks. Horowitz asked for coffee. I said that was what I wanted, too. While we waited, he said to Tom, “How goes the campaign?”

“We’re going to lose,” said Tom.

“Not necessarily,” said Curry quickly.

Tom shrugged. “Oh, we’re going to lose, all right. But it’s okay. There are more important things.”

Joanie brought our coffee. Horowitz spooned sugar into his, then bent and slurped it. “Mmm,” he said. “No lunch today. Doughnut for breakfast. Long day.”

“Let me get you something,” said Joanie.

Horowitz waved his hand. “Naw. The coffee is great. Thanks.”

“Did you check on Christie Ayers?” I asked.

Horowitz sipped his coffee and nodded. “She’s fine.”

“So are you going to tell me what happened?”

Horowitz peered up at me over the rim of his coffee mug. “Oh, we got ’em. Not very exciting. I had a dozen troopers with me. We snuck up on that little cottage. O’Keefe was sound asleep. Came without a squawk. All he’s said so far is that this Rat Benetti—the guy you shot, Mr. Coyne—he’s the one who killed your son—” he turned his head and nodded at Joanie “—and that you—” a nod to me “—jumped off his boat. He claims he never heard of Gil Speer. So then I went to visit Harry Cusick. He was at his desk, big as life. When I told him I was arresting him, all he said was, ‘I’ll be damned. He made it.’ ”

“Meaning me,” I said.

Horowitz nodded. “Yes, sir. Meaning you.”

“So what about Speer, anyway?” I said.

Horowitz shrugged. “Well, without a body… The old corpus delicti, you know. No trace of him on the boat. No blood, that I could see. They obviously swabbed it out. I’ll have the boys go over it, and the cottage, too. They’ll find traces, no doubt. And there is that big hole in the screen, of course. We can probably prove it was made by a shotgun. But that doesn’t prove anybody got killed.”

“I saw it,” I said.

He nodded. “That helps. But it doesn’t prove the man’s dead. Therefore, it doesn’t prove a murder.”

“Jesus—”

“Look,” said Horowitz. “Don’t worry about it. All I’m saying is that it makes a murder conviction tough. Not necessarily impossible. Maybe we’ll find a way to persuade one or the other of them to tell us about it. We have got some things. We’ll put together a case.”

“But,” I said, “it was Speer who killed Alice. We can’t get him. And we probably can’t prove it wasn’t Benetti who killed Buddy. Now, without Speer’s body, what do we have?”

“We’ll find something,” he said. “The drugs, at least. I’m sure we’ll find something at that cottage. And you’ll testify to what happened to you, what you saw.”

“Enthusiastically,” I said. “So who are these guys, this O’Keefe and Rat Benetti, anyway?”

“Benetti was from Elizabeth, New Jersey. Smalltimer, according to his sheet. O’Keefe is out of New York and connected.”

“The mob?”

Horowitz grinned at me. “Whatever you’d like to call it. O’Keefe is pretty high up in the drug department. He’s got direct links to Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala. One of the main guys in the Big Apple, actually. We’re real glad to have him. You do good work, for a lawyer.”

I bowed my head modestly.

“But why Windsor Harbor?” asked Tom.

“Simple as pie,” said Horowitz. “It’s where Harry Cusick worked.”

“They had something on him?”

Horowitz shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe he just let it be known that he was greedy. Something else we’ll find out soon enough.”

“Anyway, you got them,” said Joanie. “It’s finally over.”

Horowitz stood up and stretched. “I suppose it’s over for you, Mrs. Baron. But it’s not over. Not hardly. We got these two. A nice day’s work. That’s about all you can really say.” He yawned and rolled his shoulders. “You coming, Mr. Coyne? We ought to get going. We both had a long day, huh?”

A few days later I got a call from Frank Paradise. “They found her,” he announced in that booming voice of his.

“Who?”

“My baby. My
Egg Harbor,
She turned up in Sarasota, Florida. Stripped clean, of course, and in bad need of TLC. But she’s afloat.”

“That’s good news, Frank.”

“Wondered if you’d like to go down with me and bring her back. Might take three or four weeks, sorta cruise the inland waterway, catch some fish, drink some beer, tell some stories, polish her brass. You want, you can bring a lady.”

“I know one who could use a little vacation,” I said.

Sylvie had grown solemn since her encounter with the phony Messrs. Curry and Baron. She didn’t tease me very often. She tended to cry after making love. She hardly ever wandered around the house undressed. She would enjoy the trip. We planned it for the third week in November, and Frank agreed that there was no reason on earth to get back to Massachusetts much before Christmas.

Cathy Fallon dropped by my office the morning after Halloween. She appeared very somber. She handed me an envelope. I opened it and took out the multiple copies of the contract between her and her husband and her sister, Eleanor Phelps. I glanced at them and then looked up at her.

“They’re not signed.”

She shook her head. “No. No, they’re not. But thanks anyway. We will still pay you, of course.”

I nodded and shrugged. “What happened?”

She sighed. “It was Eleanor. Basically, she started having second thoughts about becoming ugly and sick. She worried about stretch marks. Oh, she never said she wouldn’t do it. But it was clear that she was unhappy about it. So Steve and I decided to forget it.” She tried to smile. “We’re going to adopt a South American child. Our name’s on a list.”

“That sounds wonderful,” I said.

She nodded and gave the smile another try. This time it worked better. “Steve and I think so, yes.”

On the evening of the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November, I drove Sylvie to the Elks lodge in Windsor Harbor. Most of the town had turned out. The folks were wearing red, white, and blue paper hats and were clutching little American flags. They waved them at each other by way of greeting.

The place was festooned with crepe paper and balloons and big BARON FOR GOVERNOR posters. Tom’s smiling face peered down from the walls. Somehow the picture made him look a lot like Honest Abe. Eddy Curry was proud of those posters. He credited the advertising agency.

A band was set up in the corner, playing country and western tunes. The guy on the banjo was a dead ringer for Earl Scruggs, and played damn near as well. My feet stomped all by themselves. I always had a weakness for good bluegrass.

Against one wall a makeshift bar had been erected. There were a couple kegs of beer and several jugs of cheap wine, and Cokes for the kids.

I got us beers and Sylvie and I found seats. She hugged my arm and shouted into my ear, “American politics is so exciting.”

I nodded vigorously. It was too noisy to attempt a real conversation.

I saw Eddy Curry bustling around at the podium that had been set up. It bristled with microphones. Television cameras were dollying around in front of it, jockeying for position. I touched Sylvie’s arm and she got up to follow me.

“How’s it look?” I shouted when I got Curry’s attention.

“Shitty.” He didn’t seem too upset.

“The polls said he was catching up.”

“Common phenomenon. He never had a chance.”

“How’s he taking it?”

Curry shrugged. “He’ll be out in a minute. Judge for yourself.”

Sylvie and I got refills on our beers and returned to our seats. A few minutes later the music stopped. There was some static over the PA system. People began to crowd around the podium. Sylvie and I stood up so we could see what was happening. Then a long applause began. The band played “God Bless America.” The good folks of Windsor Harbor sang the words to it.

When the song ended, the applause began again. Over the heads of the crowd I could see that Tom Baron had made his way to the podium. He was smiling and waving and pointing to people he recognized, nodding and mouthing the words “Hi, there. Hello. How you doing?” Joanie was beside him. She wore a good, comfortable smile.

“My friends,” came Tom’s amplified voice.

More applause. Voices yelled “Way to go, Tom,” and “Baron for governor.”

“Dear friends,” began Tom again, and when the applause drowned him out he shrugged and grinned and bent to kiss Joanie. The crowd loved it.

The band started up again. It played “Columbia the Gem of the Ocean.” Nobody from Windsor Harbor seemed to know the words to that one.

After that, the crowd quieted. Tom tried it again.

“My good friends,” he said. “I have just finished talking with Governor McElroy on the telephone. I have congratulated him on his victory tonight.”

Cries of “No, no!” went up from the crowd. Tom raised both of his hands over his head, urging them to stop.

“We have lost this election,” he said. “It’s all right. We fought hard and we lost. Somebody had to lose. This time it was us. Now it’s time to come together, to heal old wounds. We have nothing to be ashamed of. We have raised the issues we wanted to raise. We have endured difficulties. We have had our tragedy. But we have persevered. We did not win this election. But Joanie and I have won much. We have met many wonderful people. We have a new feeling, a good feeling, for this grand state of ours.”

The applause was loud and sustained and to my ears it sounded sincere.