Marine Corpse (26 page)

“I made a deal with the waiter. He brought me Mai Tais minus the booze. Just fruit juice. I can drink a lot of fruit juice without getting loaded. It does make me have to pee, though.”

“Well, anyway,” he chuckled, “you evidently made a pretty convincing drunk. Becker’s no dummy.”

“I’ve had lots of practice,” I said. “The thing is, I never did get around to taking that leak. Can’t we move it a little faster?”

A
L SANTIS CALLED ME
A WEEK later. “How’s the arm?” he said.

“I’ll be pumping iron in no time,” I said. The truth was, it hurt like hell. When I was younger, things seemed to heal faster. I had no desire to lift weights, anyway.

“Wanted to bring you up-to-date on the Becker case,” said the detective. “Figured you were interested.”

“I am.”

“The DA has hated the case from the start. Screaming for evidence.”

“Evidence? Jesus…”

“Listen,” said Santis gloomily. “Becker’s name is never even mentioned in the diary, okay? I mean, a few references to Redbeard just ain’t the same as spelling it out. Carver didn’t know Becker’s name, that much is clear. The whole goddam thing is hearsay, anyway, and there’s no convenient way to interrogate your friend there, who wrote it. In terms of evidence, it’s just a story. Pure imagination, for all we know. What we could use is, we could really use a witness.”

“I can certainly testify to an assault,” I said.

“Big fuckin’ deal.”

“Yes. I get it. What about the weapon? The pickle spear?”

“Negative.”

“And Becker won’t talk?”

“He smiled a lot, and his lawyer had him out on bail lickety-split. The assault is all we could charge him with.”

“He did it, you know,” I said. “Heather. Stu. Altoona. He set up that assassination. Becker did it all.”

I heard Santis sigh. “Maybe he did. Sure, he probably did. Whatever. It’s all academic now, anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“Gone. Couple FBI guys were around yesterday. They had papers. Jurisdiction, know what I mean? It’s now a federal case. Becker’s in their custody. It’s out of our hands.”

“I don’t understand. I know the law, and—”

“Me neither,” Santis interrupted. “All I know is, the DA ain’t fighting it. I personally think he’s relieved. Not that much fun, putting a federal drug agent on trial. Especially with the kind of case we’ve got. Becker’s gonzo.”

“Politics,” I muttered.

“Ah, we didn’t have a case anyway. If you’d been able to get him to say something into the tape…”

“Christ! He came after me with that pickle spear.”

“I know how you feel. I’m sorry.”

“So now what do we do?”

“Do? We do nothing. We go back to work, that’s what we do.”

“Not me,” I said.

“That is one hell of a story,” said Mickey Gillis, her monkey face breaking into a toothy grin. She snapped off the tape recorder that sat on the sofa between us. “Carver had himself a Pulitzer there. Another fuckin’ Watergate. And talk about plugging up the leaks. Three murders. Wow!”

“Nearly four,” I said.

“Yep. You would have made four,” she said. “That would have made the story even better.”

She lit another little cigarillo, her fourth during the nearly two hours we had sat in my office while I told her the story. “Go over that part that your pal McDevitt told you again, will ya?”

“I told you,” I said. “You can’t mention Charlie McDevitt in this.”

She waved her cigarillo impatiently at me. “Yeah, yeah.”

“About Becker’s stay in the prison camp, you mean?”

“That’s it. That’s what explains it all.”

I shrugged. “It’s not that clear exactly what happened. The VC had him for about nine months. He went in a clean-cut American boy and came out a bitter, twisted fanatic. A very heroic escape. He had to crawl through about forty miles of jungle with a broken leg.”

“It was broken because some communist interrogator had kept hitting it with a sledgehammer,” said Mickey, her eyes glittering.

“Yes, evidently. He had dozens of cigarette burns on his face. That’s why he grew a beard. To hide his scars.”

She nodded. “He kept most of his scars pretty well hidden. But they ran deep into his soul.”

“He hated the hell out of anything called communist, that’s for sure,” I said. “He was waging his own private war. Chasing down drug dealers wasn’t direct enough for him. But it gave him the access and the freedom. This thing with Lampley was obviously completely wacko. But he damn near carried it off. If it hadn’t been for Stu Carver…”

Mickey touched my arm. “And you, Brady Coyne. Don’t forget yourself.” She held her glass to me. “More, huh?”

I went over to the cabinet and sloshed some Scotch into her glass. “Can you write this story?” I said, handing her drink to her.

“Damn straight I can write it. This is a career story, Brady, old pal. Methinks I’ll do a three-parter. Part one, the assassination story. Once upon a time there was this drug agent they called Redbeard, a Rambo type, who thought he could make foreign policy by staging an assassination, then making sure the assassin himself got it so he couldn’t talk. Part two, the murders. Three interesting victims, any one of whom might have been able to blow Redbeard’s scheme right out of the water. And part three, the official coverup, in which the Feds come along like the Apaches to whisk the drug agent away from the intrepid local police before they can properly apply the full and just measure of the law. This’ll get national attention. No question about it. I’ll probably have to run down a few details. But it’s got it all. This is a biggie. I love it.”

I sat down beside her. She put her hand on the inside of my thigh and leaned her face close to mine. Her breath smelled masculine, a mixture of tobacco and whiskey. Her hard little breast pressed against the side of my arm. “Whaddya say?” she said in a raspy whisper. “For old time’s sake, huh? This sofa pull out, or what?”

“No, Mickey,” I said. “Sorry to say, it doesn’t pull out.”

“Your loss,” she said with a shrug.

I checked the paper every day for two weeks. Then I called Mickey.

“When are they going to print the story?” I asked.

“They aren’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“They killed it.”

“Who? Who killed it?”

“How the fuck do I know? They. You know. Them. It’s dead.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Me? I’m gonna write other stories. That’s what I do. I write stories.”

“That’s it?”

“Unless you got a better idea.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t have a better idea.”

Ben Woodhouse called me on April Fool’s Day. “Brady,” he said, “I think it’s time you quit sulking.”

“I’m not sulking, Ben. I don’t sulk.”

“Then it’s time you came back to work for me.”

“You misunderstand. I don’t work for anybody. I am nobody’s employee. I have clients. You used to be one of them.”

He chuckled. “Well, then, we have a misunderstanding, that’s all. We can work it out. I need you. You’re the best.”

Ben Woodhouse used to be the consummate politician. His tools had not rusted noticeably in the years since his retirement from the arena. He was deft with flattery, deadly at negotiation.

“You’re not my client anymore,” I told him. “I haven’t changed my mind.”

“Dammit, Coyne. I’m warning you—”

“Don’t try to threaten me, Ben. That won’t work, either.”

“You’ll regret this.”

“I seriously doubt it. Give my regards to Meriam.”

I hung up before he had a chance to.

A few days later I strolled through the early spring sunshine to the St. Michael’s mission. Father Joe Barrone accepted the check I handed him with a nod and a smile.

“This is most generous, Mr. Coyne. I assure you, it will be put to good use.”

Heather Kriegel, I thought, would have been pleased with the way I had chosen to execute her estate.

Charlie McDevitt was swinging his driver back and forth while we waited for the twosome in front of us to hit their second shots. The fairway was beginning to green up. Springtime had begun its annual healing of the scrapes and abrasions that winter had inflicted on the earth. The April air smelled warm and sweet. It was good to be outdoors.

“You hear the one about the lawyer who died and went to see St. Peter at the pearly gates?” he asked.

“You told me that one,” I said.

“Too bad,” he said, swiping the blossom neatly off a dandelion with his driver. “Good story. You think I can hit now?”

“You could have hit a long time ago,” I said. “You’ll probably swing and miss anyway.”

“Probably will, this being the first hole of the season and all.” Charlie took another practice swing with his driver and peered down the fairway at the two golfers who were disappearing over the rise.

Charlie teed up his ball, then stepped back. “I think I’ll wait another minute. If I catch it just right I could hit those guys.”

“Not likely,” I said.

He propped himself up on his driver. “Remember your friend there, Gus Becker?”

“He wasn’t my friend.”

“I know. Anyway, something came over the wire yesterday. He’d been assigned to a tough case in Lima, Peru. Maybe you heard.”

“I’ve heard nothing about him since the FBI took him away from the Boston police,” I said.

“Well, they sent him to Lima. Yesterday on the wire it said that he was found in the trunk of his Buick. Big bullet hole in his forehead.”

“So there’s some justice after all,” I said. “Those South American cocaine dealers play rough, huh?”

“That’s what we’re expected to believe,” said Charlie.

“And what the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

Charlie shrugged elaborately. “Like you said, justice gets done, one way or the other.”

“I don’t get you.”

Charlie peered off down the fairway. “If anyone was to calibrate that hole in Becker’s forehead, I suspect it would measure just about standard United States government issue point-forty-five.” He turned to lift his eyebrows at me.

I shook my head. “American justice. I’ll be damned.”

“I’m gonna hit now. Think it’s okay?”

“Keep your damn head down.”

He stepped up and hit it well. Then it was my turn. I was eager to get the new season under way.

Turn the page to continue reading from the Brady Coyne Mysteries

“E
VEN A BROKEN CLOCK IS RIGHT TWICE
a day,” said Charlie. “Even a monkey chained to a typewriter—”

“Yeah, yeah. I know,” I said. “So I made a couple good guesses.”

“Sheer luck. Random chance. Anyhow,” he said, tapping the flat plastic box on the top of his desk, “through the wonders of modern technology, the unlimited resources of the United States government, and the expertise of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, I have here the piece of the puzzle that you’re missing. The piece that makes sense of it.”

“Well, hell, Charlie. You gonna make me grovel, or what?”

He leaned back and grinned at me. “Naw. Makes me sick to see a grown man grovel.”

“Then play the damn tape, will you?”

“Lunch. On you, right?”

“Sure, sure.”

“Jimmy’s?”

“Agreed.”

“Lobster.”

“Sure. Lobster. Whatever the hell you want.”

“Good. It’s done, then.” Charlie went to the cabinet and took out a tape recorder. He brought it back and placed it on the center of his desk.

“The one who sounds like he’s got throat cancer is Uncle Fish,” he said, threading the tape through the old-fashioned reel-to-reel recorder.

“Vincent Collucci,” I said.

“Himself. And the other guy is Joseph Malagudi.”

“The one they call Ceci?”

“Yep.”

“And he’s the button from Atlanta.”

Charlie smirked at me. “You’ve got the terms down pretty good, Counselor. Watching reruns of the
Godfather
flicks, huh? Yeah. Ceci Malagudi is the button from Atlanta. One of the best—or worst, depending on your point of view—on the East Coast. High up on everybody’s most-wanted list, especially after taking out a promising witness in Baltimore last spring. The law, as you know, is a bit intolerant of guys who shoot other guys in the back of the head with twenty-two-caliber pistols. Anyhow, this recording came from a tap the boys downstairs had on Collucci’s phone, all legal and everything. The call was made last April.”

“Before I went to Maine.”

“Right. Before you went salmon fishing and started to run into dead bodies.”

Charlie McDevitt’s office is high in the J.F.K. Federal Building in Boston’s Government Center. The single window looks out over a broad brick-paved plaza toward what used to be, in my youth, Scollay Square, where my buddies and I would catch the Saturday morning strip shows at the Old Howard before the ball game started over at Fenway Park. On this particular summer morning a hot breeze was coming in off the ocean, and through Charlie’s window I could see sharp-dressed ladies hurrying across the plaza, leaning into the wind, their flimsy skirts plastered against the fronts of their thighs, and I thought how it was a long way from Raven Lake, way up there in northwestern Maine, a few miles from the Canadian border.