Follow the Sharks (12 page)

“Look, Stern. I hope—”

“You better hope, Coyne. You better hope and pray and meditate and every other damn thing you can think of.”

I heard him replace the receiver. He did not do it gently.

I hung up and wandered out onto my little balcony. Sylvie followed me. She handed me my wineglass and we stood side by side staring out toward the horizon, where the sky was the same gray as the water and they merged together so that you couldn’t tell where heaven and earth joined.

“Are you all right?” murmured Sylvie.

I hugged her against me. “No, dear, I’m not all right. I may just have done a very stupid thing.”

She nuzzled against my throat. “Would you like to make love?”

“It probably won’t help,” I said. “But we could try it.”

A
SULTRY FRIDAY AFTERNOON
in July, a week after Jan’s appearance on television. Julie had the day off. I don’t exactly give her days off. We don’t work that way. She’ll say to me, “Any problem if I take Friday?” and I’ll say yea or nay and we work it out. The other side of that particular coin is when I say to her, “How about Saturday morning?” It all balances out.

This time she was off with her Edward and little Megan for a long weekend in Ogunquit. Overdue and well deserved.

I spent the day talking to other lawyers, all of us trying to find alternatives to going to court. We attorneys spend most of our time looking for ways to avoid practicing law. So far as I know, no one has come up with anything better than a leisurely luncheon at Locke-Obers. On any given day, more legal disputes are resolved in the mirrored downstairs Men’s Bar, Hizzoner the distinguished maître d’ in his black tie presiding, than in all the courtrooms in Suffolk County.

I mended a fence here, created a strategic gap in one there, cajoled the odd client, the telephone suctioned to my ear for most of the day. Real Perry Mason stuff. When the phone jangled about three o’clock, it interrupted the daydream I was indulging in which I packed my waders and seven-foot Orvis fly rod into the car and drove to the Deerfield River in time for the evening stonefly hatch.

“Mr. Coyne?” The voice was low and tentative. I recognized it immediately. I had heard it three previous times, once over the crash and clatter of pins being struck by bowling balls.

“Yes,” I said. “Do you have another recorded message for me?”

“No. I want to talk to you.”

“You have news of E.J. Donagan?”

“I don’t want to talk on the phone.” She hesitated. “Can I trust you?”

“Yes,” I said immediately. “Yes, you can trust me.”

“You’re a lawyer. You’re supposed to…”

“I promise you client privilege, yes. You’re in trouble.”

I heard her exhale abruptly. “You know I am. But you mustn’t ask me any questions. You have to promise not to ask me anything. I—I have to do this my own way. If you go to the police or something you’ll never hear from me again.”

“You need an attorney.”

“Okay. Let’s put it that way. You’re my attorney.”

“I’ll have to know your name.”

“No. No questions. Please.”

“This isn’t—”

“It has to be my way, Mr. Coyne. I want to trust you. I don’t know if I can. I think you can understand that.”

“Sure. Okay.”

“Can you meet me in an hour?”

“Where?”

“The Aquarium. Be there at four. Okay?”

“Yes. How will I recognize you?”

“You won’t. I’ll recognize you. What do you look like?”

“Well, I’m wearing a brownish glen plaid suit, a bit rumpled, yellow shirt, dark green tie. I’m six-one, just the beginnings of a pot belly that you’d never notice, black hair with a little more gray in it than there was yesterday. Bluish-gray eyes.”

“Okay,” she said. “Carry your jacket over your shoulder. Look at the fish. I’ll find you.”

She hung up. I found my pulse beating hard in my temples and a kink in my stomach. I leaned back in my chair, sighed deeply, and lit a Winston. I contemplated calling Stern, then quickly discarded the idea. He wouldn’t like it, but I had the feeling that he wouldn’t want me to handle this alone, and that this woman was too cautious for me to handle it any other way. I decided to go along, do it exactly her way. The worst that could happen would be nothing, and then we’d be no worse off than we had been. At best I might learn something about the disappearance of E.J. Donagan.

Every summer camp and recreation program in the city had decided to bring the kids to the New England Aquarium to escape the oppressive heat of the afternoon. It was a good choice. Inside the big concrete structure down on the waterfront it was dark and cool.

I worked my way through the clusters of small children along the spiral ramp that encircled the great tank in the core of the building. I found a spot by a thick glass window so I could watch the fish fin past in their slow, endless circles. Some of them I could identify—the striped bass, the big sawfish, the primitive gars, turtles the size of the Plymouth Rock, and the stolid sharks, whose dead little marble eyes seemed to lock onto mine each time they glided past my window. Then there were the exotic species that most of us see only in aquariums. There was a hypnotic rhythm to the monotonous, ordered movement of this community of fishes. They swam effortlessly, round and round, all at the same speed, their tails and fins barely moving. Once in a while one fish would dart forward, but then it would fall back into the pace. They reminded me of joggers on a circular track, moving for the sake of moving, going nowhere, passing the time, hour after hour, day after day, for a lifetime. I imagined one of the fish dying. I supposed it would just sink to the bottom, and none of the others would notice. They’d continue to move in their drugged orbits, waiting for their own turn to die. Each seemed to know its place, and I wondered what happened to procreation and hunger and aggression and territoriality in this artificially sterile little ecosystem.

“Do you know why they all swim in the same direction?”

I jerked my head around. She was tall, nearly my height, with sleek ebony hair and olive skin and dark almond eyes. She wore open-toed sandals, blue jeans, and a pale yellow silk blouse buttoned tight to her slim throat. I thought she was the most beautiful Oriental woman I had ever seen.

“I never really thought about it,” I answered.

“They follow the sharks,” she said, in a voice that sounded like a mountain stream bubbling over white stones.

“I would’ve thought it was for the same reason the water swirls down the bathtub drain counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere,” I said, smiling. “Or maybe it’s just the currents in the tank.”

She didn’t return my smile. “Maybe that’s it.” She looked me up and down quickly. “You are Mr. Coyne?”

I nodded. “And you? What’s your name?”

She frowned. “I told you. No questions. Please, I’m not—”

“And I told you. You can trust me.”

“I don’t know that,” she said. She moved closer to me. “I’m Annie. I—I saw the mother on television.” We watched the fish for a minute. “I decided I had to help. I don’t know. I think it was a mistake.” She glanced back over her shoulder. “I should leave. I should never have come here.”

“Don’t be afraid.” I touched her shoulder.

“But I
am
afraid. This was stupid.”

“Are you interested in the reward? Is that it?”

She drew away from me and shook her head. “No. Of course not. It—it’s my conscience, don’t you see?”

I nodded. “Then let me help you.”

She stared into my eyes. “You can’t help me. It’s too late for that. I know what you’re thinking, but I’ve got to take care of myself now.” She put her hand on my wrist. “Mr. Coyne, listen. I’m going to trust you. I’m involved in this. You know that. I didn’t know—never mind. I have to do something now. I can’t just follow the sharks. If they knew what I was doing, if they ever found out that I was here with you…”

“Annie…”

“Don’t,” she said. Her hand found mine, and I felt her pass me a scrap of paper. She gave my hand a quick squeeze then pulled it away. “Don’t look at it now. Put it into your pocket. I’m going to leave. Please stay here for fifteen more minutes. Don’t even turn around when I go. Don’t try to follow me or anything. If—when I’m certain I can trust you, I’ll get in touch again.”

“Does this…?”

“This doesn’t give you all the answers you want to know. It’s—it’s something. For now it’s all I dare.”

“Annie,” I whispered. “Just tell me. Is E.J….?”

But she was gone, as abruptly as she had appeared. I remained standing there, watching the fish follow the sharks in their slow eternal circles and feeling the scrap of paper in my pocket weighing there like a ton of guilt.

A quarter of an hour later I turned and walked out into the liquid heat of the city.

I was seated at a tiny metal table at the Cafe Florian on the sidewalk of Newbury Street. The breeze that was funneled down the street ruffled the linen tablecloth but failed to relieve the city heat. I sipped iced chocolate and nibbled at a rich chocolaty Sacher torte and wondered if I’d done the right thing. I probably shouldn’t have called Stern. He’d bitch and bluster and insist on trying to find Annie. But a glance at the paper she’d given me persuaded me that I needed his help. My first obligation was to E.J. Donagan, not the Oriental woman who called herself Annie, and who, after all, had participated in kidnapping him.

On the other hand, Stern could screw it up, and then we’d be back where we started.

I took the sheet of paper from my jacket pocket, unfolded it, and smoothed it on the table. I don’t know what I had expected it to say. Annie had made it clear that she wasn’t ready to tell me where to find E.J., or who had kidnapped him, or even if he were still alive. But I had hoped for something more, something less oblique, something that made sense.

She was cautious, and she had given me a puzzle. Five names. The names of five baseball players. So her message concerned Eddie. That was as far as I could take it.

I glanced up and saw Stern coming down the sidewalk toward me. I refolded the paper and shoved it back into my pocket. Stern walked with a cocky, elbows-out swagger that reminded me of a rooster. His hatchet-shaped face and big dark-rimmed glasses completed the picture.

He didn’t look too happy.

He sat down opposite me and flourished his handkerchief. He was sweating profusely. “Damn this humidity,” he muttered. “No relief in the whole damn city.”

“Have some iced chocolate,” I said. “Cools you right down.”

He took off his glasses and mopped his face. “I could use a beer.”

“They don’t sell beer here.”

“I could use my air-conditioned office, is what I could use. So whyn’t you just tell me what the hell you’ve got, huh?”

“Take it easy. Relax. We’ve got to have some understandings first. Okay?”

Stern narrowed his eyes. “What kind of understandings?”

I ate a hunk of my torte. Stern watched me, his eyebrows lifted expectantly. “I think I’ve got a source of information,” I said. “I have agreed to certain things. In return, I think we may get some help in solving this case.”

Stern jabbed at me with his glasses. “You’ve agreed to certain things, huh? Like what? You know this is a federal case, don’t you? If you plan to withhold information material to a federal case, Coyne—”

“Don’t, for Christ’s sake, try to tell me the law. This person came to me because I’m a lawyer, okay? You’ll notice she didn’t go to you.”

“She?”

I nodded. “The person. My source.”

“It’s a woman, huh?”

“Look,” I said. “We can terminate this right now. I do want your advice, but I’ve made certain commitments.”

“Client privilege. Sure. Figures. This woman is your client.”

“Right.”

“Coyne, I can get a subpoena, you know.”

“Oh, don’t try to bully me. Just shut up and listen. Okay?”

He shoved his glasses back on and frowned. “Go ahead,” he said.

“She called me this afternoon. She said she wanted to talk to me. I recognized her voice.”

“The same one?”

“Yes. I met her at the Aquarium. She gave me something. Said there’d be more, implying that it depended on my handling it discreetly. Talking to you now isn’t particularly discreet. So I’ve taken a risk. But I figured you should know what’s going on.”

He nodded. “What did she give you?”

I removed the paper from my pocket, unfolded it, and spread it out on the table for him to see.

He glanced at it and frowned. “There’s just five names here.”

“Yes.”

“Who are these people, do you know?”

“They’re baseball players. Or they were. None of them is still active.”

“You think they’re the ones who kidnapped the boy?”

“No,” I said. “I’m afraid it’s not that simple. Two of these men aren’t even alive. This one—” I pointed to one of the names “—this Gus Geralchik died of cancer two years ago. And Bobo Halley here, drove his car into a bridge abutment or something back in eighty-three.”

Without warning Stern’s fist came down on the table. I grabbed at my glass of iced chocolate and saved it from tipping over. “Damn it, Coyne!” he growled. “You’re telling me you had this—this woman, who helped to kidnap E.J. Donagan, and all you got out of her is
this.
The names of five goddam
baseball
players, for Christ’s sake? Listen. Did you
ask
her who did it? Did you ask her who snatched the boy? Did you?”

I took a sip of my chocolate. I could tell that my refusal to allow him to ruffle me infuriated him. I put down my glass and dabbed my mouth with a napkin. “No. No, I didn’t.”

“Did you threaten to bring her in?”

“Of course not. And I didn’t hint at thumb screws or water torture, either. Calm down for a minute and listen to me. She called me. Of her own free will. She’s very scared. I gave her my word that I would ask no questions, that I’d take what she had to give. And this is what she gave me. She said maybe there’d be more.” I shrugged.

“Terrific,” he mumbled. “Just terrific. So she wants us to play a fucking game of Clue with her.” He shook his head sadly and peered up at me. “Okay. So tell me about these baseball players, then. You checked ’em all out, right?”