Vulgar Boatman (12 page)

Buddy had left two nights ago. I supposed he’d taken a key from the drawer where he’d found the chess pieces. He had left with the intention of returning. He’d left with a purpose, not just to avoid jail. But what had he been after? And had he found it? It seemed clear to me that he’d hoped to learn something about Alice Sylvester’s murder. He’d had an idea he wanted to confirm, or to find evidence to support.

Had his killer followed him to my apartment? Or had he come here to wait for Buddy? Or—a sudden thought—had the murderer come to wait for me, making Buddy a tragic victim of circumstance?

But if the killer had come for me, why?

Questions. No answers.

The buzzer rang. I went to answer it. It was Hector, informing me that a gang of policemen were on their way up.

The next hour or so was a blur of questions, mostly the same questions over and over. And most of my answers were “I don’t know.”

The medical examiner deduced that Buddy had indeed been tortured by someone burning his fingers in the toaster, and that he had died by strangulation. The M.E. speculated that the pain in Buddy’s fingers had caused him to strain against the fly line bound tightly around his throat, which, in turn, constricted his windpipe until he suffocated.

After photos were taken they untied Buddy’s body, laid it into a plastic body bag, and took it away. Most of the cops departed, leaving only a team of forensics guys and a state police detective named Horowitz. Horowitz was a soft-spoken man about my age who ruminated nervously on a big wad of bubble gum. He wore wrinkled chino pants and a short-sleeved white shirt with a little blue bow tie. He looked like a travel agent, not a cop.

I had spent most of this time seated on the sofa in my living room smoking cigarettes. Horowitz came over and sat beside me.

“Who’s Eddy Curry?” he said.

“Curry? He’s Tom Baron’s campaign manager. Why?”

Horwitz shifted his cud of gum from his left to his right cheek. “Why would Curry come here?” he said.

“As far as I know, Curry doesn’t even know where I live. I can think of no reason why he’d come here. What’s Curry got to do with this?”

Horowitz called over his shoulder to one of the forensics guys. “Get that guard in here, willya?”

A minute later the plainclothes cop returned with Hector. He wore a gray shirt and dark blue pants and a badge. He carried no weapon. Hector’s eyes darted around the room. When they lit on me, he looked relieved.

“C’mere,” said Horowitz.

Hector came and stood in front of us. “Sit down,” said Horowitz.

Hector sat on the edge of the chair next to the sofa.

“Tell it again.”

“The boy come back maybe eight o’clock,” he said. His right knee jiggled as if he were trying to shake off a swarm of killer ants. “Same boy come the other night, okay? I call up, like always. This time you not home.” Hector lifted his black eyebrows to me. “The boy, he say he wanna wait for you, you give him a key. I figure he was here before, he’s okay, right? He show me his key, see, and I know he’s your friend. I fuck up, huh?”

I waved my hand. “No. No problem. It’s okay.”

“Did you give the boy a key?” said Horowitz to me.

I shook my head. “No. No, I didn’t. But I know where he got it, I think. I’ve got a drawer full of junk. Including spare keys. He must’ve seen them when he was getting the chess set. He probably grabbed a bunch of them after I went to bed and tried them. He must’ve been planning to come back all along.”

“Why? Why leave and then come back?”

I shrugged. “I have no idea.”

Horowitz turned to Hector. “Okay. What then?”

“I say this already. I’m sorry I do a bad job. A little later, maybe eight-thirty, nine, two guys come. Ask to see you, Mr. Coyne. I say you not home. They ask is the boy there yet. I tell them, yes, he’s there waiting. They say they with him, they wanna wait, too, they all friends, they gonna have meeting with you. What do I know? I call up there, tell the boy they coming up.”

“What did Buddy say?” I said.

“He say, who are they? I tell him the names.”

“Eddy Curry?” I said.

“That one of ’em, yeah. Other one Tom Baron. I remember that.”

“You’re sure of those names,” said Horowitz. “Curry and Baron?”

Hector nodded vigorously and grinned. “Sure. One of ’em got the same name as the man running for governor, right?”

Horowitz nodded.

“What did these two look like?” I said.

“One tall, skinny. Other big guy. Not so tall. Fat.”

“Tom Baron’s tall and thin,” I told Horowitz. “Curry’s fat.”

“We’re going to take Hector to the station to look at some pictures,” said Horowitz.

“Can I ask a question?” I said.

Horowitz blew a bubble. “You’ve been asking questions right along. Go ahead.”

“Did you see Buddy leave the other night?” I said to Hector.

He looked blank. “I send him up there, remember? I don’t see him come down.”

“He could’ve taken the elevator to the parking garage in the basement,” I said to Horowitz.

“What about Curry and Baron? Did you see them leave tonight?”

Hector shook his head. “I tell you that. No. Maybe they use the elevator, too.”

“Okay,” said Horowitz. “You go back and wait. We’ll be with you pretty soon.”

Hector stood up and hesitated. He looked at me. “I’m sorry if I fuck up, Mr. Coyne. I’m trying to do a good job.”

I waved at him. “Forget it.”

After Hector left, a uniformed policeman approached Horowitz. “Sir?” he said.

“What is it?”

“We talked with all the neighbors. On this floor, and five and seven, too. Nobody heard nothing.”

Horowitz shrugged. “They never do.” He nodded to the cop, who walked away. Then he turned to me. “Well? What do you think?”

“I think,” I said, “that if Tom Baron and Eddy Curry came here to kill Buddy, they wouldn’t have walked in the front door, given Hector their correct names, let him see them, and then done it here.”

“Supposing they didn’t intend to kill him. Say they figured they’d just talk to him, and then when he didn’t cooperate they tried to torture him a little. To get information. Whatever it was he went after. It backfired. They ran out when they realized what happened.”

I shook my head. “Tom Baron wouldn’t kill his own son. Not Tom. Curry’s kind of a bag of shit sometimes, but he’s not a murderer.”

“What about you, Mr. Coyne?”

“I’m not a murderer, either.”

“Nah,” he said. “ ’Course not.” He glanced at his wrist-watch. “You got somebody you can stay with tonight? The boys’ll be here a while, vacuuming and dusting and all. It’s pretty late. You’re just gonna be in the way.”

“I’ve got to use the phone,” I said. “Is that okay?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“Who you’re gonna call.”

“Tom and Joanie Baron. Buddy’s parents.”

Horowitz shook his head. “No. Don’t.”

“Why the hell not?”

He sighed and popped his gum inside his mouth. “We’re better at that sort of thing than you are.”

“Come off it, Horowitz.”

“Okay. I want to handle it my way. And I’m in charge of this case. That good enough for you?”

“I owe it to Tom to tell him.”

“Tom Baron is a name in this case.”

“Tom didn’t kill his own son, for Christ’s sake. You don’t believe that, do you?”

He shrugged. “I believe very little, one way or the other. I either know something, or I don’t know. Belief has nothing to do with it.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “Look. Call them tomorrow. I promise we’ll handle it properly.”

I nodded. “Not that it’s something I exactly look forward to.”

“Don’t talk to anybody about what happened here, Mr. Coyne. That’s an order.”

“I hear you,” I said.

Sylvie was still out of town, but I had a key to her Beacon Street condo. I told Horowitz where I’d be and promised to show up at the state police headquarters the next morning to give a deposition.

I spent a restless night alone in Sylvie’s big bed watching old black-and-white movies on a UHF channel. The next morning I called Doc Adams to cancel our bluefishing expedition. Then I taxied over to Horowitz’s office.

Horowitz was still jawing on his gum. I wondered if it was the same piece he’d been worrying the previous night.

He had me talk into a tape recorder, telling everything I knew about Buddy Baron and my involvement with him and Tom. He prodded me with gentle questions, and it took nearly two hours. When I was done, he snapped off the recorder and said, “Well, that’s about it for now.”

“What about Curry and Baron?” I said.

Horowitz shook his head. “It wasn’t them. Your night man, there, we showed him photos, he was positive it wasn’t them. He didn’t find anything that struck his fancy in the mug book. We got a couple sketches. The guy was pretty hazy, though.”

“Can I see the sketches?”

Horowitz popped a bubble inside his mouth. “I was going to show them to you, you give me a chance.”

Horowitz was right. The sketches could have been anybody. One had a fatter face than the other. The hairlines were different. I handed the sketches back and shrugged. He nodded.

“You want to keep an eye out, you know?”

“What do you mean?”

“These two guys, they went to your place, right?”

“So?”

“Just take care. We never did find any key. Assume they’ve got it. Better change your lock. We’re circulating the sketches, of course, but as you saw they’re pretty nondescript.”

“You think they might…?”

He shrugged. “Can’t tell what’s going to happen, Mr. Coyne.”

“What about Buddy’s parents?”

“They’ve been told. They’re coming to ID the body this morning. We’ll be holding it for a while, get an autopsy. And I talked to the chief at Windsor Harbor. Harry Cusick. He and I will be coordinating. He’s got that girl, I’ve got this boy, and we figure two kids from a dinky place like Windsor Harbor get themselves killed—both strangled, actually—there’s a connection. This does not take a lot of brains. So we’re working together. What they call good, professional police work. We’ll see where it goes. Maybe the Feds’ll get involved.” He stood up. “Anyway, Mr. Coyne, we appreciate your help. If you think of something, be sure to let me know.”

He escorted me out of his office. We paused in the doorway to shake hands. “You can go home now, if you want,” he said. “We’re all done there.”

“Find anything?”

“I don’t know yet. Forensics’ll put together a report. There’ll be some things to check out. May need your help on that later. I’ll let you know.”

Noontime on a crisp September Saturday and I had nowhere to go and nothing to do. I wandered up Commonwealth toward the Common, aiming more or less for Sylvie’s place. Too late to change my mind about bluefishing with Doc. Too early to hit a bar. The Red Sox were playing out another futile season in Cleveland, so Fenway Park would be locked up. The Old Howard had been razed years before.

A hug from Sylvie would have helped. But she was still in New York.

With a little mental shrug, I cut over to Copley Square. Might as well hit the office for a few hours. I could write a few letters and clean up my perpetually tardy paperwork. Julie would be proud of me when she came in on Monday.

I picked up a ham and Swiss on pumpernickel and a can of Pepsi at the deli and took them up to the office. I spread everything out on Julie’s desk and ate while I listened to the tape from the answering machine.

Frank Paradise had called. “I want my boat” was the entire, plaintive message.

Two attorneys called, both asking me to get back to them on Monday regarding cases of mutual interest.

I perked up my ears at the next message. It was Eddy Curry. “Tried your house,” he said. “No answer there, either. Appreciate it if you’d call Monday.” He left a phone number that I recognized as a Boston exchange.

The last call intrigued me even more. The caller identified herself as Ingrid Larsen. I remembered the green eyes and the blond hair and the way her knit dress had clung to her curves when I followed her through the corridors of her school. “I wasn’t very civil with you the other day,” she said, “and I wanted to apologize.” She sounded breathless, in a hurry, as people often do when leaving messages on a tape. “I am considerably less hostile away from the office, honest. Like in elegant restaurants.” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, just to say sorry.”

She left no number, no request for me to return her call. I thought about looking it up and calling her anyway. But I didn’t. I didn’t need an adventure just then. And I wanted to be witty and charming the next time I saw Ingrid Larsen, qualities of which I felt utterly devoid at that moment.

I downed the warm dregs of my Pepsi and went into my office. On my desk were the notes I had made for the Fallon case. Just what I needed. A writing exercise in legalese.

I roughed out a draft of the agreement between Steve and Cathy Fallon and Eleanor Phelps regarding their respective obligations toward their as yet hypothetical child. When I finished, I went back over it, adding a few whereases and whereupons until it sounded right. Then I rolled a piece of paper into my typewriter and put it into a form that Julie would be able to read.

It was nearly five o’clock when I finished. I propped my feet up on my desk and smoked a Winston. Then I smoked another one. Then I did what I had known all day I had to do.

I called Tom Baron.

An unfamiliar female voice answered the phone. “The Baron residence,” it said warily.

“I’d like to speak to Mr. Baron.”

“May I ask who this is?”

“May I,” I retorted cleverly, “ask who you are?”

She cleared her throat. “I happen to be a neighbor, and Mr. and Mrs. Baron—something has happened. They can’t come to the phone.” She paused, then added, “I’m sorry.”

“My name is Coyne,” I said. “I’m the family’s attorney.”

“Oh, well. Yes. Please hang on. I’ll see if Mr. Baron can speak with you.”

I heard voices in the background, and a minute or so later Tom came on the line. “Brady, Jesus Christ.”

“I’m real sorry, Tom.”

“This is unbelievable, Brady. It’s…”