Death on a Vineyard Beach (30 page)

Menemsha is a genuine fishing village, but looks so perfect that you suspect it was designed by Walt Disney. Its post office is sufficiently quaint to have once been painted by Norman Rockwell as a
Saturday Evening Post
cover. There is a Coast Guard station there, a restaurant where the lobster is good, an antique shop, a boutique, a couple of fish markets, some snack shops, and not much else. Like the citizens of many of the island's communities, Menemsha residents believe their spot is the island's finest, and wouldn't think of living anywhere else. They only wish that not so many people knew about it.

Joe Begay and the other man were working on lines for conch pots. Coils of line lay in the cockpit of the boat under their feet, as they spliced.

Joe Begay made introductions. “Buddy, this is J. W. Jackson. J. W., this is Buddy Malone.”

I shook Buddy Malone's hand. “You're the guy who sold this boat to Joe.”

“That's right. Now he gets to try his hand at it. I'm going into another line of work.”

“I do some scalloping down in Edgartown, but I've never done this sort of fishing.”

“I been at it long enough. It's like any other job. There's good parts to it and there's bad parts. If you like it, and if you work hard enough at it, and if you're lucky, you can do all right.”

Begay tugged at the bill of his cap and picked up a line. “Buddy's showing me the ropes. He hasn't painted any rosy pictures for me, either.”

“I wouldn't do that,” said Buddy, taking up a line and working at a new splice. His scarred fingers were still nimble, and he was at least twice as fast as Begay, who worked slowly and methodically, making sure that his work was strong. In time, he would need to work faster, if he was to keep his gear in shape.

“You have trouble with trawlers wrecking your gear?” I asked.

Buddy snorted. “Does a bear shit in the woods? We lose gear all the time. If it isn't the trawlers, it's the storms. We can't afford insurance, fuel costs more every day, the market is down, taxes are up. You name the problem, the fishermen have got it.”

“He's a terrific salesman,” said Begay, with a grin. “Makes me wish I'd gone into the business ten years ago.”

“Buddy, did you ever hear of a guy named Luciano Marcus?”

Buddy's fingers flew. Then he shook his head. “Nope. Never heard the name.”

“You guys have a fishermen's association of some kind, don't you? You never heard anybody talk about Luciano Marcus?”

He thought some more, then shook his head again. “Nope. Who's Luciano Marcus?”

“He's a guy who owns several of those trawlers that tear up your gear. Somebody took a shot at him the other day, and I was wondering if any of the pot fishermen on the island might have had something to do with it. Jimmy Souza says he lost his boat and has his house on the market, because the trawlers put him out of business. That might be motive enough for somebody to take a shot at somebody.”

Buddy Malone's hands moved to the next splice. “I know Jimmy. It wasn't the trawlers that cost him his boat. It was the booze. The booze is a problem for a lot of fishermen. It keeps them warm when they're cold, it makes them happy when they're sad, it lets them forget things they want to forget. It can get so the booze is the most important thing. You start off drinking so you can keep on fishing, and you end up fishing so you can keep on drinking. And then you get to be the next Jimmy Souza.” He looked up from his work. “That's one reason I'm getting out of the game. I'm beginning to like the juice too much. But as for this Marcus guy, if somebody is mad enough to shoot him, I never heard about it.”

I looked around the boat. It was about thirty feet long,
with a forward steering station and a wide, open deck, where you could stack pots and other gear. It was beamy and had a fairly high bow, but had low freeboard amidships. There was a rig to haul pots, and a spare outboard motor mounted on the stern, in case the inboard ever failed. It was sturdy and without frills, a classic New England fishing boat, the kind you see going out for lobsters off Maine, or dropping fish traps off the southern coasts.

The lines Joe Begay and Buddy Malone were working on would string pots together on the ocean floor. There would be a float at either end of the line, topped by a radar reflector, so the fisherman could find them even in fog or darkness. He'd start at one end of the line, and pull up the pots one by one. When a pot came up, he'd keep what catch he could sell, dump out the garbage, rebait the pot, and drop it overboard again. Then he'd go on to the next pot. It was not romantic work, but fishing and farming are only romantic pastimes to those who have never practiced them.

Trawlers would cross his lines and wreck his pots, storms would set the floats ashore, lines would part, pots would break up, and his catch would not wait for fair weather to be gathered. The fisherman would be out there in all but the very worst weather, often in an old boat without insurance, harvesting the sea.

And the fisherman himself was often his own worst enemy, overharvesting depleting stocks of game, taking no thought for the future other than tomorrow and the next boat payment. He fished out grounds, and bitterly complained when he could no longer bring back the catches he'd gotten in the old days. He sank boats to collect insurance money, if he was lucky enough to have insurance. He glutted the market when the fishing was good, and complained about the low prices he got.

It was a job I was glad I didn't have, although I had admiration for those who stuck at the trade, in spite of their shortsightedness and self-destructive inclinations.

They that go down to the sea in ships.

“You hear anything about Jimmy Souza going to an AA meeting?” asked Buddy.

“No. Is he doing that?”

Buddy shrugged. “I don't know. Somebody mentioned it. I guess I hope he is.”

I'd read that AA didn't help unless you were ready for it. I didn't know if Jimmy was ready.

“I guess I do, too,” I said.

I sat in the afternoon sun and for a while watched Buddy Malone's flying fingers and Joe Begay's slower, careful ones. Then I went home.

While I picked beans, watered the flowers in the boxes along the fence and in the hanging pots, and refilled the bird feeders, I ran things through my head. A few pieces were missing from the jigsaw puzzle, but if I was lucky, I might have them soon. It all depended on whether Sullivan or Thornberry checked out the names I'd given them, on what they found when they did so, and on whether they'd tell me what they learned, which they might well not do.

I was in one of those They Also Serve situations that irk me. I don't like to depend on other people to solve my problems, but short of going up to Boston myself, I'd have to, in this case.

I went inside and called Aristotle Socarides. Naturally, he wasn't answering his phone. What else was new?

I went out and looked at my hydrangea. Still not blue.

I went in and started supper. At least I could accomplish that.

  
25
  

When the information finally came, two days later, it came like catsup from the catsup bottle. Two catsup bottles, in fact, one shaken by Gordon Sullivan and one by Jason Thornberry. Blobs of data about Benny White.

Sullivan was friendlier than he had been the last time we talked. “I checked Mr. Benny White out, and the kid they call Roger the Dodger. Roger's brain wouldn't light a twenty-amp lightbulb, but he hangs around with Benny,
like a dog. You know the type. Benny's something else. A real hard-ass. Beginning to make a name for himself in the street. A bad boy, getting worse. Likes to muscle people. You know he went to college? Yeah, UMass Boston. For a semester. Ran a little numbers game there with—guess who?—your boy Vinnie Cecilio. They both dropped out about the same time.”

“And stole cars together.”

“One, at least, that we know of. Probably more that we don't. But that was just the start, for Benny. Since then, he's been brought in for questioning about aggravated assault, assault, battery, and rape, but nothing's stuck. People won't testify, or they drop charges. You know how it is.”

“Yeah. They know he'll be back on the street about five minutes after he gets probation, and they're afraid he'll come after them.”

“He runs some girls, and probably is into gambling and dope, too, but mostly he seems to want to be muscle for hire. 1 get the idea he just likes to beat people up. He likes people to be afraid of him.”

“You think he's a killer?”

“There are rumors about that, too. Maybe you can help us out there. We don't have a mug shot of Mr. White, but we've got a couple of what you might call informal snapshots, and I'm going to fax one down to the Edgartown police. Maybe you and your wife can take a look at it and let us know if he's the guy who tried for Luciano Marcus. If you can ID this slimeball, I can get a warrant to search his place. He lives with Mom, down in Dorchester, and she'll probably swear that he's home every night by seven and leads the church choir on Sundays. But we might find something that will help us nail him.”

I'd barely hung up the phone when it rang again.
Quelle surprise!
Jason Thornberry was on the line.

“J. W., Jason Thornberry here. I have some information I think might interest you.”

Surprise again. Jason Thornberry was actually going to give me information instead of just accepting it? “Shoot,” I said.

“Following up on those names you gave me, one of our
operatives managed to get inside the home of Mrs. James White, the mother of Mr. Benjamin White. It was done quite legally, I assure you.”

“I'm sure.” I was, too. There's no law in Massachusetts against lying about who you are, unless you lie about being a policeman and try to act like one. You can pass yourself off as anyone, real or imaginary, and nobody can charge you with anything, although some aggrieved party can no doubt find a lawyer who'll give it a try. Probably a Thornberry operative wearing gas company coveralls, or some such outfit, carrying a clipboard, and armed with one of those neat ID's that look so official, knocked on Mrs. White's door, said something about a meter or the smell of gas in the neighborhood, and was invited in.

If it was me, I'd have used the smell-of-gas story, and would have asked the old lady to step across the street, just to be on the safe side, while I checked things out. Then, while she was gone, I'd have done some fast snooping before telling her all was well, and bringing her back inside.

Thornberry didn't give the details about the entrance, but got right to the point about what was found.

“In the boy's room, our operative found a box of double-aught buckshot shotgun shells, about half full. Found a box of latex gloves. Found a good deal of money in a drawer. Found some white powder in a cellophane bag. Found a pistol. A .38 or a 9-millimeter. Found an address book with Vincent Cecilio's address and telephone number in it.” He paused. “Seemed to our operative that, considering all the stuff he kept in his room, Benjamin had a lot of confidence that nobody would ever come to his place. Our operative had a casual little chat with Mrs. White. Her husband is dead. The boy is an only child. Mom does everything for him, except clean his room. You can guess why he doesn't want her in there. Something else, too.” Another pause. Even when I'd first known him in Boston years before, Thornberry was a man who knew the value of drama. Even then he wore one of those little Errol Flynn mustaches, and worked hard at looking like Henry Fonda in
Fort Apache.

I played along. “What?”

“It seems that her son had an accident a while back.
Slammed his hand in a car door and broke his little finger.”

Ah.

“You going to tell all this to the cops?” I asked.

“My first obligation is to my client. We want to contact the other person, Roger the Dodger, before we make any reports to anyone. This call to you is simply to keep you up to date, since you gave us the lead.”