A Case of Vineyard Poison (11 page)

I parked and went up onto the porch. There were pizza containers, plates of half-eaten food, and more beer cans on the floor. I wondered when the cleanup
crew was supposed to arrive. September, likely, in the form of the landlord, after the summer inhabitants of the house were back in school. Teenagers and college types are not noted for their neatness, and this household was apparently no exception.

I knocked on the door.

After a while I heard unsteady footsteps coming, and the door opened to reveal a young man wearing wrinkled shorts and a badly hungover face. He stared vacantly at me and mumbled something.

I asked if Denise Vale was in. His red eyes registered a vague understanding of the question. He shook his head and made a noise which seemed to be a negative.

“She does live here, doesn't she?”

“Uhn.” The heavy head nodded slowly.

“But she's not here now?”

“Uhn.” The head shook.

“Is she working? Where does she work?”

The young man pawed at his face, as if to wipe away the cobwebs. He smelled greatly of stale beer.

“Not here,” he said with surprising clarity.

“Is she at work?”

He thought about that, husbanded his strength, and said, “Don't know.”

“Where does she work?”

This was a puzzler. He frowned and bit his lip, then raised a feeble finger and pointed in several directions. “Town. Fireside.”

“The Fireside, in Oak Bluffs?”

“Uhn.” He seemed perilously close to falling over. Then he recovered and looked intently at me. “Missed the party,” he said.

Yes, I had. “Thanks,” I said. “Get some rest.”

“Uhn.”

He lurched out of sight. I pulled the door shut and drove back to downtown Oak Bluffs.

Oak Bluffs' main street is Circuit Avenue, which is lined with shops catering to the day trippers who come over on the boats from the Cape. These visitors catch buses at the dock and take tours of the Vineyard. When they get back to Oak Bluffs, they grab some fast food, buy made-in-the-Orient souvenirs with the words “Martha's Vineyard” written on them, and go back to America having “seen” the island. Thousands come and go every summer.

The citizens of Oak Bluffs, knowing which side their bread is buttered on, make no bones about catering to this thrifty day trade, and the little shops and fast-food joints that line Circuit Avenue give the town a honky-tonk quality that differentiates it from the island's other major towns: Edgartown, whose captain's houses are huge and white and whose shops are the expensive kind, and Vineyard Haven, which is a normal New England town that just happens to be set on Martha's Vineyard.

Oak Bluffs is not only a street of souvenir shops, of course. It has its share of fine homes, and is famous for the Victorian gingerbread houses that surround its Tabernacle. As a major East Coast black summer resort, it is also the most racially integrated town on the island, and has been for decades. Its black merchants, lawyers, professors, butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers are at least as aristocratic as their white equivalents in Edgartown and elsewhere, and many of their families have been coming to the island just as long.

Oak Bluffs is also home to the Fireside Bar, one of the principal watering holes for the year-round working stiffs
and the summer college crowd. The Fireside is where the island's fights usually used to start, and occasionally still do. It is a bar where the smell of grass is mixed with that of beer and various glandular emissions, and a place where an efficient waitress who doesn't mind roving hands and unimaginative proposals can earn a good dollar in tips. It's also where my sweet, half-witted friend Bonzo earns his daily pittance with a broom and a bar rag.

Bonzo was once a promising lad, I'm told, but long before I met him he reputedly got into some bad acid that did a number on his brain. Since then, he has been rowing with one oar. He lives with his widowed schoolteacher mother, loves birds and collects their songs on his recording equipment, and is a childish but dedicated fisherman whenever he can get someone to take him to sea or to the beach. I am occasionally that someone.

I parked up toward the market and walked back down to the Fireside. The street was crowded, and I wondered once again why these people were here instead of at the beach. Come to think of it, why was I here instead of at the beach?

The Fireside was dark and not too crowded. It served pub food as well as drinks, and the noon crowd was just beginning to wander in. I went to the bar and ordered a Molson. The bartender served me, then went down the bar and began setting out pickles, boiled eggs, pickled sausages, pretzels, and peanuts. I watched the room in the mirror and saw Bonzo cleaning tables in the back. He hadn't seen me yet. An aging waitress began to take orders at the tables.

The beer was good, but then there is no bad beer. Well, actually, there is some bad beer, but Molson doesn't make any of it. When the bartender seemed satisfied
with his work down the bar, I waved at him and he came back. I ordered another Molson. When he brought it, I asked him if Denise Vale was around.

He rubbed the bar with a clean rag, and decided that he would tell me. “No,” he said. “She's not around.”

“I thought she was working today.”

“She don't work here anymore, buddy.”

“I just went by her place. A guy there said she was here.”

“Well, she's not. Dammed college kids. Can't trust a one of them. Don't know what it means to have to work, you know what I mean?” He looked angry.

“Maybe I do,” I said.

“You a friend of hers?” His voice was hard.

“No, but I want to talk to her.”

“Well, she's not here.” He leaned on the bar and looked at me. “Damned kid hasn't showed up for three days. She was supposed to work all weekend and never fucking showed up at all. No telephone call, no explanation, no nothing. Left me shorthanded on the busiest nights of the week. You see her, you tell her she's fired! Had to get my wife in here to fill in. She's still here, for Christ sake. Pisses me off, you know what I mean? Kids nowadays, you try to give them a break, a job where they can make a couple of bucks, and what do they do? They just take off. You know what it is, don't you?”

I could guess what he thought it was. “Spoiled rotten? No respect for money? Rich daddies? Don't have to work like ordinary people?”

“That's it, buddy. You got it.” He shook his head. “Seemed like a nice kid, too. Worked real good right up to now. Then this. Jesus, it's hard to stay in business with the kind of help you get these days.”

“She's a good worker, then?”

“Yeah. Till now, that is.”

“Never did anything like this before?”

“No, but once is enough. I got to have dependable help. I got to be able to rely on my people.”

“Like Bonzo.”

He glanced at Bonzo, then back at me. “Yeah, like Bonzo. You know Bonzo? I guess everybody comes in here knows Bonzo. Yeah, like Bonzo. Bonzo ain't got much going for him, but what he's got he brings to work. Every day. He can work here as long as he wants to. I'll always have a place for him.”

“What kind of a girl is Denise Vale?”

“Well, I thought she was okay, till now. You know. Worked hard, never got too mad, took all that crap the guys give a girl and never took it personal. I thought I had a winner. Now this. Now I got to get another girl, and who knows what she'll be like? I tell you . . .”

“Maybe she's sick,” I said. “Maybe she's in the hospital.” I thought of Kathy Ellis. “Maybe she fell off a moped or something.”

“You think so?” He was willing to consider it. I got the notion that if Denise Vale was sick, she could get her job back.

“I don't know,” I said.

The waitress, who apparently was also his wife, came up with drink orders from the tables, and the bartender got busy filling them while she took the food orders back to the kitchen. I looked into the mirror and saw Bonzo coming toward me. He was wearing his amiable smile. I turned on the stool, and he shook my hand.

“Thought I saw you, J.W. I was busy back there, but I like to keep my eyes open, and I saw you sitting here. How you doing?”

“I'm good, Bonzo. You want a beer?”

His face got serious. “Oh no, J.W. I'm on duty. I never drink any beer when I'm on duty. I got a lot of work to do here. I got to be on my toes.”

“Say, Bonzo, do you know a girl named Denise Vale? She was working here last week.”

His dim eyes brightened a bit, and he nodded his head slowly. “Oh yeah, J.W., I know Denise. She works here. She gives me some of her tips when I clean up her tables for her. I guess Denise is okay.”

“She was supposed to work here over” the weekend. Do you know why she didn't?”

Bonzo rolled his eyes toward the bartender and lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Bob's pretty mad about that. About Denise not being here. You know, he had to get Jackie to come in here and work, and they were both pretty mad. And I didn't get any of Jackie's tips, either. Not one. But you know what?”

“What?”

He winked. “I don't think that Jackie gets many tips. Not like Denise does.” His voice came back to its normal level. “Denise gets a lot of tips.” Then he leaned toward me. “Why you want to know about Denise, J.W? You a friend of hers?”

“I just want to talk to her. Does she have any special friends here? Somebody who might know how I can get in touch with her?”

He thought carefully. “You mean like somebody who comes in here to have a beer?”

“Yeah, someone like that. Anybody who might be able to tell me where I can find her.”

“You mean, like somebody who comes in here to eat, and they and Denise got to be friends?”

“Yeah, Bonzo, somebody like that.”

He leaned upon his broom and gave the matter great consideration. Finally he looked at me and shook his head. “I don't know of nobody like that. I guess I'm as good a friend as she's got. She always gives me some of her tips, you know.”

“Does she have a boyfriend, Bonzo?”

That was a poser, and Bonzo gave it his best thought. Finally he nodded. “You know, J.W., I think she does have one. She said once to me, she said, I'm going to meet my boyfriend after work and we're gonna go to Falmouth to the movies. Yeah, that's what she said, and that means she's got a boyfriend.” He looked at me with his innocent, empty eyes and nodded again. “Yeah, I guess that Denise has got a boyfriend all right.”

“You really like the young girls, don't you, you son of a bitch?” said a furious voice beside my right ear. I turned my head to see who was talking and a mule kicked me in the jaw. The world turned odd colors and shapes, and I went off my barstool, over or through Bonzo, and down onto the floor. There was a roaring in my ears, and things went dark, then lightened again. Bonzo was half under me. I rolled off him and looked up. A rhinoceros was walking toward me.

I got a hand on a barstool and threw it at the rhino's legs. He kicked it aside and came on, but by then I was on my feet. I felt airy, and knew that I was hurt and needed more time. I backed down the bar, touched something on it, and threw the something at the rhino. He ducked and kept coming on. Things were coming back into focus. The roar in my ears became the sound of alarmed and interested voices, and I saw that the rhino was Miles, the medic who had tended to Kathy Ellis's body. His face was red and angry and the knuckles on his left fist were bloody. I faded away from him and touched my jaw. My hand came away red.

I shook my head and Miles came in a rush. He was a big guy. I grabbed a dish of peanuts off the bar and threw that in Miles's face. Salt in the eyes might help.

He came on and threw that left again. I got away from most of it, but slammed into a table. I felt a sharp pain where I still carried that bullet next to my spine, a souvenir from my Boston P.D. days. Normally I didn't think much about the slug, but now the pain sent a rush of fear through me. The table stopped me long enough for Miles to get close, land a hard right, and keep punching. He was a head hunter, so I ducked and got my arms up enough to take most of the blows on them. Another left got through and popped my ear, and I fell or was pushed over the table. Miles tossed the table aside as I
got up again. I was beginning to feel less ethereal and more angry and frightened.

I could hear Bob the bartender yelling “Stop! Stop!” but Miles wasn't stopping. He came on, and hit me again, and suddenly I felt some control snap inside of me. A red veil fell over my eyes, turning the world crimson. I heard an antediluvian noise come out of my throat, and then I was no longer retreating, but going to meet Miles. He swung those big fists, but I brushed them aside as though they were the flapping of moths' wings, and hit him four times, very hard below the heart. If he struck me again, I didn't feel his blows. Everything was happening very fast, but it seemed that I had more time than I needed. I could plan things and then do them. I hit Miles on both sides of the jaw, then under his left ear, then in the throat, and when he raised his hands I hit him again under the heart, then stepped back and kicked him hard in the groin. He tried to double over and fall, but before he could do that, I got a hand on his belt and another on his shirt, swung him off his feet, and drove him headfirst into the front of the bar.

Then he was on his face on the floor, and there was blood in his hair. I had a knee on his spine, that bloody hair in my hand, and I was bending his head back and back, when I became aware of Bonzo's voice saying, “No, no, J.W.! No, no, J.W. You'll hurt him bad, J.W.! Please stop, J.W. It's not good to hurt people! No, J.W.! Don't hurt him!”

I saw hands pushing down on the hand that was pulling Miles's head back, and slowly the red veil fell away and the world became normal in color. The sound that had been in my throat faded and I was panting, pulling great breaths of air into my lungs. I saw that
Bonzo owned the hands pushing down on my hand, and that he was trying with his small strength to keep me from breaking Miles's neck.